The Participation Paradox: Between Bottom-Up and Top-Down Development in South Africa 9780228015727

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Acknowledgments

THE PART ICIPAT ION PAR ADOX

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mcgill-queen’s studies in protest, power, and resistance Series editor: Sarah Marsden Protest, civil resistance, and political violence have rarely been more visible. Nor have they ever involved such a complex web of identities, geographies, and ideologies. This series expands the theoretical and empirical boundaries of research on political conflict to examine the origins, cultures, and practices of resistance. From grassroots activists and those engaged in everyday forms of resistance to social movements to violent militant networks, it considers the full range of actors and the strategies they use to provoke change. The series provides a forum for interdisciplinary work that engages with politics, sociology, anthropology, history, psychology, religious studies, and philosophy. Its ambition is to deepen understanding of the systems of power people encounter and the creative, violent, peaceful, extraordinary, and everyday ways they try to resist, subvert, and overthrow them.

1 New Media and Revolution Resistance and Dissent in Pre-uprising Syria Billie Jeanne Brownlee 2 Games of Discontent Protests, Boycotts, and Politics at the 1968 Mexico Olympics Harry Blutstein 3 Organizing Equality Dispatches from a Global Struggle Edited by Alison Hearn, James Compton, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Amanda F. Grzyb 4 The Failure of Remain Anti-Brexit Activism in the United Kingdom Adam Fagan and Stijn van Kessel 5 The Participation Paradox Between Bottom-Up and Top-Down Development in South Africa Luke Sinwell

preface

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The Participation Paradox Between Bottom-Up and Top-Down Development in South Africa

luke sinwell

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

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Preface

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2023 isbn 978-0-2280-1461-4 (cloth) isbn 978-0-2280-1572-7 (epdf) isbn 978-0-2280-1573-4 (epub) Legal deposit first quarter 2023 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: The participation paradox : between bottom-up and top-down development in South Africa / Luke Sinwell. Names: Sinwell, Luke, author. Series: McGill-Queen's studies in protest, power, and resistance ; 5. Description: Series statement: McGill-Queen's studies in protest, power, and resistance ; 5 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220414262 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220414270 | isbn 9780228014614 (cloth) | isbn 9780228015727 (epdf) | isbn 9780228015734 (epub) Subjects: lcsh: Community development—South Africa—Thembelihle—Case studies. | lcsh: Democracy—South Africa—Thembelihle—Case studies. | lcsh: Poor—South Africa—Thembelihle—Case studies. | lcgft: Case studies. Classification: lcc hn801.t54 S56 2023 | ddc 303.4096871/3—dc23

This book was typeset by True to Type in 10.5/13 Sabon

This book is dedicated to the people of Thembelihle without whom it would not exist. May their stories inspire a new generation of revolutionary activists. And to my son, Harugumi Joseph Sinwell.

Contents

Figures and Tables ix Abbreviations

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1 Participation’s “Decapitation”

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2 Recasting the Development “Saints”

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3 The People’s Parliament and the Origins of Grassroots Democracy 53 4 Electing Working-Class Activists 86 5 Between Bottom-Up and Top-Down Development 123 6 The Struggle within the Struggle 159 Notes 187 Index 211

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Contents

Preface

Figures and Tables

figures 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2 5.1 5.2 6.1

Shack constructed of metal and brick in yard 33 Map of Thembelihle in South Africa 39 Pit toilets not enough 42 Grassroots organizer walks the street 71 Long-standing resident next to his shack 75 Youth leader addresses meeting 95 Protesters commemorating “youth day” 111 Young man standing with burning material at protest 128 Activists taking notes and listening 129 tcc activists sit under a tree 179 All pictures taken and granted access to by Trevor Ngwane. Map constructed and granted access by Miriam Maina.

tables 3.1 Timeline of Thembelihe 1983–2007 57 3.2 Timeline of Thembelihle 2008–14 58 3.3 Timeline of Thembelihle 2015–present 59

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Table and Figures

Preface

Abbreviations

anc ancyl apf blas cals cosatu dlf eff ems epg frelimo gear iec jmpd numsa okm pac par pra rdp sacp sanco saps secc seri sgb srwp

African National Congress anc Youth League Anti-Privatisation Forum Black Local Authorities Centre for Applied Legal Studies Congress of South African Trade Unions Democratic Left Front Economic Freedom Fighters Emergency Medical Services Empowered Participatory Governance Front for the Liberation of Mozambique Growth Employment and Redistribution Independent Electoral Commission Johannesburg Metro Police Department National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa Operation Khanyisa Movement Pan African Congress Participatory Action Research Participatory Rural Appraisal Reconstruction and Development Programme South African Communist Party South African National Civic Organisation Structural Adjustment Programmes Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee Socio-Economic Rights Institute School Governing Board Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party

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xii

tcc uk US

wssd

Abbreviations

Thembelihle Crisis Committee United Kingdom United States (of America) World Summit for Sustainable Development

Ice/Water on the Move

THE PART ICIPAT ION PAR ADOX

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2

The Participation Paradox

Participation’s “Decapitation”

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1 Participation’s “Decapitation”

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.1 The last twenty years have ushered in a period Lee et al. have called a “Participatory Revolution” with consultants, advisors, and non-profits called into communities, classrooms, and corporations alike to listen to ordinary people’s voices.2 Exclusively bureaucratic approaches are no longer in vogue and so authorities create “open” forums for engagement. But the ideology of public consultation and grassroots democracy often functions as smokescreens for a cost-effective means by which to implement topdown decisions. As participation has become mainstreamed by governments around the world so have its anti-colonial and anti-capitalist roots become tamed by neoliberal forces that reinforce poverty and inequality. Taking as a starting point that the resources and opportunities of the dispossessed were historically denied or stolen from them, this book seeks to reclaim participation’s emancipatory potential. Perhaps nowhere are the promises and pitfalls of participatory approaches to development more potent than in Thembelihle, a Black shantytown consisting of more than 20,000 residents in the southwest of Johannesburg, South Africa. When the African National Congress (anc) government attempted to evict residents in 2002 on the contentious grounds that the community was living in a hazardous zone on dolomitic land (see chapter 3), the people responded resolutely employing physical demonstrations, literally in the thousands, with one clear

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The Participation Paradox

message: our community shall remain. This appeared to symbolize the quintessential bottom-up response to top-down decision-making authority. The residents told themselves, and indeed the police and the ruling anc, which had already signed Thembelihle’s death sentence: No one will destroy our homes on the land that is ours, that we live on with our children, which we occupied out of desperation and in the hope of a better life. But a relatively small group of local community activists would go far beyond this. They undertook an offensive war against capitalism, which they believed was necessary to attain the upliftment of their own and other working-class communities. Direct democracy through their own mass meetings, called the People’s Parliament, was one of the primary mechanisms through which strides could be made to obtain these objectives. The Participation Paradox demonstrates that in Thembelihle, home to one of the most radical and long-standing civic organizations in the postapartheid period, participatory processes over the last two decades have nevertheless reproduced important aspects of top-down development processes, centralized state authority, and neoliberal ideology. Through occupations (which disrupted the routine activities of school and work), alongside consultative mass meetings (sometimes consisting of up to 2,000 residents), engagement with local and provincial officials, and, indeed, sustained protest, a certain tinkering with the budget can be made to possibly benefit one specific outspoken community. Participatory processes may not bring what we had hoped: rather than empower the disenfranchized they may obscure broader processes of exploitation and oppression.3 The paradox is that social movements mobilizing in the absence of counter-power must negotiate with those authorities who create the very misery that grassroots militants seek to challenge. Thembelihle, as we shall see in the ethnographic description that colours the chapters that follow, offers one unique iteration of participatory approaches from the early 2000s to the present period, which remain hotly contested. People’s involvement in decision making to uplift this informal settlement has occurred (in its mainstream version) while some children die before reaching their teens. They have been traumatized and physically brutalized by the electric shocks of make-shift electricity connections and burnt in their homes because of lack of access to basic services. But the narrative presented in this book also offers glimpses of heroic if momentary popular alternatives in light of sustaining a socialist core intent on uniting the entire working class. This chapter defines what may

Participation’s “Decapitation”

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be called Freirean-Marxist or emancipatory forms of participatory democracy which emerged in the late 1960s, highlighting the centrality of the politics of the consultant, government official, or activist who intervenes in participatory processes, before discussing the social and political context within which radical versions have been co-opted and mainstreamed by the neoliberal project across the globe over the past several decades. This provides the theoretical grounding for understanding the radical possibilities for participation in Thembelihle and beyond. Chapter 2 shifts the discussion to broader questions of participatory governance, highlighting the limits and possibilities of cases around the world, in particular the Porto Alegre, Brazil, experiment, before situating the study in the South African context. Although the post-apartheid anc government appeared momentarily to offer an alternative form of participatory governance rooted in the collective power of ordinary people’s ability to control their own destinies, this process, in fact, mirrored international trends to a significant extent as it was watered down during the during the negotiations associated with the transition to democracy in 1994. Participation must be understood not as a fixed or immovable entity but as a process. It is therefore the product of power relations whose institutions result in part from progress made by social movements from below. Thembelihle’s activists do indeed contest the terrain of popular participation in decision-making processes, and the core chapters of this book, chapters 3 to 6, demonstrate how the residents consistently challenge top-down development plans. They mobilize for collective social change using radical actions, including peaceful marches, electricity connection, and road and land occupations, to achieve their objectives; conscientize their community about anti-capitalist alternatives; vote for “socialist candidates”; and extend beyond the local to build broader working-class struggles at schools, in the workplace and against xenophobia. The Participation Paradox offers an innovative ethnography, written through the lens, and as much as possible in the words, of residents themselves, in order to foreground a twenty-year working-class local history of participation from below. The book showcases the story of how the underdogs, the historic victims of development, not only waged a heroic struggle against forced removals but also developed a Marxist, participatory response to crises within and beyond their own locality, which may be scaled up elsewhere. Chapters 1 and 2 frame the ethnographic material. Chapters 3 to 6 bring to life, through vivid oral testimonies, the paradoxes and possibilities of popular agency and its seem-

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The Participation Paradox

ingly insurmountable twin, institutionalization. The narrative suggests that participatory governance should not only be viewed through the eyes of the neoliberal state but also through the lens of democratic grassroots organizations rooted within the most advanced, conscientized, sections of the dispossessed.

paulo freire: the politics of participatory change agents This chapter demonstrates how movements for self-determination and collective control over indigenous land and resources were paradoxically stifled by neoliberal discourses associated with local ownership, empowerment, and popular participation. Classic Freirean works from the 1960s as well as post-development thinkers in the decades that followed are imperative to consider since they point to structural and institutional forms of oppression which tend to be obscured by mainstream practices of participation. The inherent danger will be returned to in each chapter that follows: it is that in the quest to do good by listening to the poor, systems of oppression are perpetuated rather than challenged. The origins of participation in the form of participatory action research (par) provide insight into the nature of the concept’s radical roots and how they have been displaced. Paulo Freire, the popular educator from Brazil, is one of the founding fathers of par. This research methodology aimed to achieve self-emancipation and to obtain people’s power: to locate practitioners and activists within the direct experiences and knowledge systems of the majority in the Global South (at that time, the term used was Third World), while simultaneously aiming to create the conditions for their own liberation from oppressive structures. It is argued in this introductory chapter that the specific social and historical context within which participation in development and governance are enacted tell a great deal about the political forms that are likely to result from its interventions. Equally important, then, are the politics of those “outsiders” who seek to engage with grassroots actors in the process of obtaining popular participation. These actors were defined as “the mediators,” “agents of change,” or, simply, “the educators,” without whom, Freire believed, the oppressed could never find their way. Before exploring a central critique of Freire, I define his theory and practice and link it to the idea of popular participation. Freire takes as a starting point that participation is not impartial or apolitical. Like edu-

Participation’s “Decapitation”

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cation and par, it functions to either maintain the status quo or to challenge it. The theory of participation, or participatory development, is often cited in academic literature as having its “roots in Freirean philosophy.”4 This is the idea that ordinary people, through becoming “conscious” of their own social situation, can mobilize collectively to challenge the structures of society that serve to oppress them. This approach was underlined by Marxist, revolutionary, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, which called for radical forms of direct democracy and popular education. Leal has weighed in with this perspective as well, in line with post-development thinkers who maintain that “social transformation” enacted by the people themselves in their attempts at self-determination or liberation “can and should produce development, while institutional [or capitalist and imposed by the West] development historically has not led to social transformation.”5 “The reason for this is very clear,” he insists. “[I]nstitutional development was simply never intended to do so.”6 Paulo Freire was among those who were the most critical of the dominant approach to development at the time, which was being imposed by imperialist powers. Drawing from his own experiences with poverty and his observation of the mass inequalities that existed in Brazil, Freire introduced a radical and alternative approach to development based on his attempts at achieving adult literacy in Brazil. This approach to participation in development sought to empower marginalized people to control their own destinies. This meant that people needed to be conscientized to think critically about the structures of society that serve to oppress them. Freire’s notion of a culture of silence highlights a situation in which the oppressed were submerged in a mode of education, teaching, and learning that led them to accept paternalistic handouts without coming to terms with the way in which society was structured to keep them subservient under existing social relations.7 His work, specifically the landmark Pedagogy of the Oppressed, identified the pitfalls of a kind of involvement that does not engage with politics and power – one that leads to what he calls the domestication of time and history and that turns the oppressed into objects of the oppressor’s destiny. In this sense, participation is not intended to enable people to redefine their own development. Instead, people’s participation is intended, at most, to simply determine the direction of projects within the government’s or development agency’s pre-conceived frameworks. Freire was referring to capitalism. Nowadays one may refer to neoliberal capitalism. “My abhorrence of neoliberalism,” he later wrote in 1998,

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The Participation Paradox

“helps to explain my legitimate anger when I speak of the injustices to which the ragpickers among humanity are condemned.”8 The technical means-to-an-end approach to participation is described as domesticated because it occurs within the framework of the oppressors and imposes itself onto the oppressed who internalize their oppression. The oppressed are led to view their oppression as the natural order of things, rather than something that is socially constructed through power relations and therefore transformable.9 For Freire, oppressed people become aware of their social situation not just to be heard but in order to create a world that is no longer defined by their oppressors. Indeed, any material benefit that the oppressed have received from the oppressors is false generosity because it occurs within the framework and dictates of the oppressor, serves to give false hope to the oppressed, and further enshrines the current system of domestication.10 In this line of thinking, “there can be no valid ‘aid’ and there is no room in development language for the terms ‘donors’ and ‘recipients’” since donors give aid on their own terms.11 Unlike when participation is put forth as a means to achieve an end, the goal of the Freirean approach to participation is for people to shape and control their own histories and destinies not within the world as it currently exists, but in order to transform it. The oppressed must struggle to have their interests addressed as individuals and through collective and individual action because their quest to become more fully human can only begin when their humanity is claimed on their own terms. Freire’s main contribution to the thinking on participation began with the assumption that the current mode of development is not working for those who are in fact the most vulnerable. To counteract this, Freire insisted that a radical political project should be undertaken to actively resist development that the dispossessed were not able to define themselves and then redefine to create a new kind of development to suit the interests of those who are not treated justly by the current system. Freire was a pioneer in the development of par in the Global South (in particular its spread from Latin American to the African continent and eventually across the world). But there were other key figures, such as Orlando Fals Borda, a scholar of the peasantry and other oppressed groups in Columbia, who were equally important. While there is contestation over the original meaning and foundation of the theory, one prominent scholar makes the case that “The specific term Participatory Action Research belongs to Fals Borda.”12 What is imperative for this discussion is that the concept builds upon Freire’s underlying philosophy: it is anti-

Participation’s “Decapitation”

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capitalist and decolonial. par did not emerge from outsiders or from boardrooms of economic elites or bureaucratic government administrators. Its theory and practice are, in their most progressive, original version, located amongst the oppressed themselves. “par has shown itself,” according to Fals Borda, “to be an endogenous intellectual and practical creation of the people of the Third World.”13 What exactly this latter point means and how it should be achieved is a point of contention. Freire’s groundbreaking contributions tended to over-emphasize class relations as the primary site of resistance and domination, thus neglecting an analysis of identity, race, and gender politics. In part a reflection of his own times, Freire’s early work was infused with sexist language that reinforced patriarchal attitudes. It suggested that men (not women) constitute the leading forces for radical social change.“Patriarchal manhood” and “freedom,” in this skewed interpretation, are necessarily intertwined. The internationally renowned Black feminist scholar, bell hooks, her own intellectual journey deeply influenced by Freire, was keenly aware of this but resolved that, “Freire’s own model of critical pedagogy invited a critical interrogation of this flaw … But critical interrogation is not the same as dismissal.”14 Freire has also been accused of anointing himself as possessing the antidote for oppression and thereby being the sole or genuine liberator of the oppressed. Esteva et al. offered a penetrating critique of Freire’s praxis. Within Freire’s paradigm, he argued, the oppressed are incapable of achieving liberation on their own: “They [the oppressed] need an outside critical intervention.”15 The outsider, educator or change agent embodies “the secret formula of a power to which they [the oppressed] must be initiated.”16 Within this conceptualization of empowerment, A (the outsider) has something B (the oppressed) does not have: it must be given to them. Rasmussen has argued that Freire’s thinking undermines the oppressed, rural peasants in particular, since it assumes that they themselves cannot fully comprehend the historical and structural processes that led to their very condition.17 “The hub of the problem,” according to Blackburn, is that “any pre-determined vision of liberation introduced from the outside is ultimately paternalistic, since it presupposes that the oppressed are incapable of determining their own endogenously produced vision of liberation.”18 Blackburn warns that, “the particularist notion of power in Freirean thought can all too easily lead to manipulation by educators [or agents] with other agendas.”19 This critique of Freirean thinking is by no means new. Early appraisals of Freirean approaches were already touching the surface in the late 1970s

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The Participation Paradox

and early ’80s as authors pointed to the need to “demystify Freire.”20 In 1976, Kidd and Byrum were involved in one of the first attempts at combining community-based popular theatre with Freirean techniques in Bokalaka, which is located in the northern part of Botswana. This project involved “Freirean experts” and was intended to be rooted within the direct experiences of the oppressed. According to their own account: Instead of creating the drama out of a common sense or “external expert” understanding of the problem, an intermediate step of problem analysis was introduced. This represented an attempt to get away from prescribing “text book” slogans (e.g. “Good nutrition means three balanced meals a day”) and to take account of villagers’ perceptions and the actual socio-economic situation. This took the form of a type of constraint analysis. This involves listing people’s knowledge, attitudes and practice with respect to each problem; identifying from this list the key constraints (e.g. misbeliefs, lack of resources); and deciding which of these constraints might be successfully challenged and which current practices should be built on and supported.21 “Handing over the stick” to the rural people seems like a noble act, but it is not one that magically transforms the politics of interventions or which, in practice, extracts the role of the “Freirean expert” from broader configurations of power. The project’s response to lack of sanitation in Bokalala illustrates this point. The construction of toilets in people’s homes could neither be afforded by the rural folk themselves nor did the project envision that this basic need could be rolled out by the state. The project planners sought to limit the expectations of rural Botswanans. Villagers needed to reconfigure, perhaps even tone down, their expectations: “In the discussions on sanitation it was decided that the promotion of toilets at this stage would be unrealistic. Very few families have the resources or the motivation to build a toilet. As an alternative the festival promoted the digging of a trench by each family and the practice of taking a shovel to cover one’s excreta.”22 In the community-run participatory theatre this was, “crudely sloganized in the puppet show as ‘one family, one trench – one shit, one shovel.’”23 Despite the good intentions of a participatory intervention, the outcome meant more self-help for the poor, who should merely dig their own trenches for excrement. Freirean thinking is not immune from the paradox of participation.24 Cloaked in the idea of listening to the poor and the

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oppressed, Freirean practice linked to popular participation may become a pawn in the hands of the token welfare state, reinforcing the logic of bare-minimum neoliberalism. Notwithstanding these salient critiques, Freire’s theory and practice gained great currency around the world in the context of national liberation struggles in the South and came to be viewed as a threat to the power of the West in particular. In 1977, Fals Borda was the core organizer of the launch of the first international conference on par. The energy and precision of leadership at this conference captivated scholars in the North and South and planted the seeds for par’s exponential growth. According to Hall, “many of his [Fals Borda’s] colleagues in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America had made decisions to use their intellectual skills and connections to strengthen the political movements associated with revolution and democracy of the time.”25 According to Leal, the historical context within which participatory development and democracy was unfolding was of central importance: [W]e must locate ourselves in the context of the Cold War, whose most significant disputes (which were anything but “cold”) took place not in the First but in the Third World. National liberation struggles were on course in Africa in countries such as Namibia, Angola, and Guinea Bissau. Tanzania had undertaken its historic project of Ujaama socialism under the leadership of Julius Nyerere. In Central America, the Sandinista rebels had triumphed in Nicaragua, and revolutionary insurgencies in El Salvador and Guatemala were underway. In South America, the brutal dictatorships of the Southern Cone were confronting an increasingly belligerent popular opposition. In all of these cases, popular education and participatory grassroots action were playing an active role.26 Political leaders of popular upsurges of the 1960s and then 1970s called for indigenous people of the Global South to take control over their own destinies: some sought to repossess the land upon which their ancestors had been born and place the natural resources of their own countries into the hands of the masses. And so participation (as it was conceptualized within the framework of certain indigenous people) became a threat to the established socio-political order. In other words, “participation and popular education had taken sides with the Left and not the Right.”27 Leal further observed, “In the world run by the ultra-reactionary Reagan–Thatcher politics of the 1980s, the very

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The Participation Paradox

decade in which participation began its ascendancy, this would not go unnoticed … The threat was real and palpable” and in order to maintain and build hegemony, participation’s theory and practice “needed to be reckoned with.”28 The World Bank, United Nations, and other forces, as we shall see, would use crafty strategies to co-opt radical ideals of self-reliance and participatory liberation into its own market-oriented development agendas.

participation’s decapitation In part as a response to Marxist tendencies within anti-colonial movements across the world but also because of the perceived need for the development establishment to be seen as uplifting nations in the Global South, participation soon became mainstreamed, watered down, and depoliticized. The radical politics underpinning popular participation meant that its theory and practice were essentially decapitated in a longterm, calculated strategy by neoliberal institutions such as the World Bank to give a more human face to an inhumane market-driven or economistic development agenda.29 The history of the Global South is intimately linked to ideological conflict between the West and the Soviets. The 1960s therefore became a collision of these two worlds and brought crises to the Global South. The crisis led to different adaptions and assimilations of popular participation into what evolved into the hegemonic framework of neoliberalism. The West’s development establishment did not sit back and wait passively while Marxist liberation movements capable of capturing the imagination of the masses were on the horizon. The perceived need for participation must therefore be viewed within shifting discourses and contested meanings of development. The “positive orthodox” approach to development, dominating much of the thinking in the late 1940s and 1950s, implied that “technocrats should analyse the problems of bringing about economic growth, and that good ‘scientific’ analysis would generate ‘right answers’ to the question of what should be done through planning.”30 In other words, technocrats should be responsible for determining development, which was understood purely in economic terms and could be delivered to the people of the “Third World.” In 1952, the first Report on the World Social Situation followed this trend by initiating a program that was based on topdown prescriptions for economic development. This publication was influential due to the interest it drew from the United Nations and other

Participation’s “Decapitation”

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institutions. According to Esteva, documents such as this were “trying to develop in the ‘underdeveloped’ countries the basic social services and the ‘caring professions’ found in the advanced countries. These pragmatic concerns, as well as early theoretical insights going beyond the dogmatic vision of economic quantifiers, were, however, overshadowed by the general obsession with all-out industrialization and gnp growth which dominated the 1950s.”31 There was no need for international organizations or governments to advance methods of participation because development was conceived of in technical terms as economic growth; it was therefore most effective as a top-down strategy that could be applied to the “Third World.” By the 1960s, however, the need for an approach to development that accounted for the social aspects of development was added to the language of development. The Proposals for Action of the First un Development Decade (1960–1970) declared, “The problem of the underdeveloped countries is not just growth, but development … Development is growth plus change. Change, in turn, is social and cultural as well as economic, and qualitative as well as quantitative … The key concept must be improved quality of people’s life.”32 Despite a rhetoric that emphasized the social dimensions of development, throughout the beginning and mid-1960s, the economic imperative remained the critical component of development interventions and the social aspect was side-lined or considered to be an obstacle to economic growth.33 There was little possibility, within this paradigm, for people to participate in development, beyond being informed of, and able to take part in, market-led development programs. By the mid-60s, there was a “‘crisis’ in the prevailing orthodoxy.”34 The first world’s development plans to lead the “Third World” on a path towards economic growth and modernisation were no longer left largely unquestioned. “It became clear,” according to Esteva, “that rapid [economic] growth had been accompanied by increasing inequalities.”35 In this context, dependency theorists and Marxists emerged to critique the dominant imposition of development or capitalism onto the “Third World.”36 These intellectuals and activists, or “mediators,” gathered that if development is a deadly poison for the Global South, its antidote must be found in alternatives to development (as opposed to development alternatives within the existing capitalist system). While the terms “backwardness” and “poverty” were introduced by the Global North in their own corrupted image of what is good for society, for Marxists, “the “backward” or “poor” countries were in that condition due to past lootings in the process of col-

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The Participation Paradox

onization and the continued raping by capitalist exploitation at the national and international level.” In other words, “underdevelopment was the creation of development.”37 While participation is now often cited in academic literature as having its “roots in Freirean philosophy,”38 Freire’s approach to participation in development was by no means mainstreamed even in the 1960s and 1970s. Freire’s was perceived as a threat to those in power. It aimed to defy “structures of oppression” thereby undermining and potentially challenging the dominant political-economic order.39 In part as a response to radical agendas such as Freire’s and other Marxists as well as the perceived failure of development initiatives in the 1960s, the dominant path to development in the 1970s became centred around basic needs and popular participation was conceived as a central tenet to this approach.40 Unlike Freire’s approach, however, participation could occur within the framework of capitalism and was supported by international organizations. Nevertheless, the perceived need and people’s demand for people’s involvement in decision making in development was increasing. Cornwall contends that “the welter of declarations that emerged in this period promised a decisive shift, away from top-down, technocratic economistic interventions towards greater popular involvement in the development process.”41 By 1975, the United Nations Economic Social Council advised that governments should “adopt popular participation as a basic policy measure in national development strategy … [to] encourage the widest possible active participation of all individuals and national nongovernmental organizations, such as trade unions, youth and women’s organizations, in the development process in setting goals, formulating policies and implementing plans.”42 Furthermore, the US Congress’s 1973 Foreign Assistance Act emphasized that intended beneficiaries needed to play a critical role in development planning, implementation, and benefits.43 By the late ’70s and early ’80s, participation was becoming mainstreamed in development projects throughout the world. Major international aid organizations “found that, whenever people were locally involved, and actively participating, in the projects, much more was achieved with much less, even in sheer financial terms.”44 Thus, development agencies began to advocate to end top-down approaches to development. The infliction of neoliberal Structural Adjustment Programmes (saps) of the imf and World Bank (which, by definition, meant the “rolling back of the state” in the Global South) were carefully adopted alongside partic-

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15

ipatory approaches aiming to placate the masses. Leal calls participation in this context “a new battle horse for official development at the time of the shock treatment of Structural Adjustment Programmes.”45 In his seminal article “Participation: The Ascendancy of a Buzzword in the Neoliberal Era” he takes a post-development stand with the nations of the Global South, viewing the dominant form of development as a colonial and imperialist project purposefully designed to dispossess the people of the Global South. He adds that:

saps were the operational methodology that, in practice, implemented neo-liberalism in poor nations. By using the re-negotiation of Third World debt as leverage, the international financial institutions were able to force poor countries to do things that were clearly against their best interest. Thus the wave of privatisation, denationalisation, elimination of subsidies of all sorts, budgetary austerity, devaluation, and trade liberalisation initiated a deep social desperation throughout the Third World. The anti-sap riots in Caracas in 1989, which left more than 200 people dead; the bread riots of Tunis in January 1984; the anti-sap riots led by students in Nigeria in 1989; the general strike and popular uprising against the imf reforms in Morocco in 1990; and the Zapatista uprising of 1994 against the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta) are but some of the most emblematic examples of the social and political backlash that the saps produced.46 The idea of people’s “ownership” over development projects “was stripped of any association with a transfer of power and control. Instead, it became associated with people ‘buying in’ to development initiatives for their benefit through contributions of cash or kind.”47 Participation was therefore perceived as a means by which to ensure the efficiency of “cost recovery” schemes in the context of the diminishing role of the state.48 Similarly, taking into account his field work in Sri Lanka, Mike Woost shows how “participation came to be cast as the act of partaking in the objectives of the economy, and the societal arrangements related to it.”49 He tells us further, with regard to market generation projects, that “the programmes were said to be participatory because they obtained people’s participation in the market-led development strategies.”50 Freirean and other participatory approaches became embedded in the hegemonic development establishment, disguised by the attractive – even saintly – idea of listening to the people.

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The Participation Paradox

neoliberalism’s participation: recasting the development saints As post-development thinker Majid Rahnema had declared already in 1990, in a reference to Christianity, participation became “the Last Temptation of Saint Development.”51 The idea of bottom-up planning captured the hearts and minds of those development “saints” who wished to challenge the top-down orthodoxy: [A] number of idealists, many of them belonging to well-to do citydwelling families, had been attracted to “field work.” Resenting the bureaucratic attitudes of experts who were acting as the “priests” and administrators of the new development “church,” they discovered to their great satisfaction new forms of solidarity that had regenerated life in some other depressed areas. These new forms represented, for them, development in one of its original meanings: “to unfold, like a flower from the bud.”52 “Like the first disciples and followers of a new religion,” Rahnema maintained, “such activists came to believe that the wrongs witnessed at certain operational levels need not be attributed to the ideology of development [itself].”53 Rahnema’s “Saint Development” failed to gain prominence in mainstream debates even though his ideas would later inform, from the early to mid-2000s, radical critiques of participation in development and governance. Indeed, it is rarely acknowledged that participation enables immense dividends to be distributed to those who have created seemingly progressive or “safe” spaces from which to toe the neoliberal World Bank line. Robert Chambers, who today is easily one of the most cited scholars in the field of development studies, was perhaps the quintessential development saint. Chambers’ reflections drew primarily from his experiences with failed development projects such as those involving irrigation in, for example, South Asia and Africa. In a twisted take on Freire’s liberatory anti-capitalist approach, the development saints could be adapted to suit the neoliberal agenda since, from this perspective, “True charity … consists in a … dialogue or intercourse with the poor,” not a “condescension over the poor.”54 This “saint’s” first influential publication was called Rural Development: Putting the Last First.55 According to Oakley, Chambers’ study was the only “detailed analysis of the implications of a style of intervention which seeks to reverse decades

Participation’s “Decapitation”

17

of established practice” which favoured top-down development which disregarded the views and realities of those affected.56 The title urged readers to consider the idea that those suffering in the midst of rural poverty (the last) needed to be put first. In so doing, he stressed the idea of role reversals between development specialists and those living in rural poverty and sought to critically assess the “perceptions, attitudes, learning, ways of thinking and behaviour of professionals.”57 Chambers asserted that socalled development specialists, who came especially from the US and the uk, were “outsiders” who did not understand the needs and realities of those living in poverty in the rural areas who they were attempting to help. To respond to this, Chambers argued that specialists needed to learn as much as possible from the rural people living in poverty by making them partners in research, interviewing and spending time with them. His book therefore insisted that top-down approaches to development were inadequate, and that development specialists needed to move from “authoritarian to participatory communication” with rural people living in poverty.58 Practitioners and theorists such as Chambers theorized extensively the role of community participation in shaping development over several decades. Chambers’ most well-known contribution dealt with participatory rural appraisal (pra), which has had a considerable impact on the ideas of participatory development in general. The basic point of pra is that the methodology should facilitate the involvement of beneficiaries in their own development. Using pra techniques, the researcher or developer is meant to “hand over the stick” and listen to the beneficiaries view of the situation so that the latter’s agenda comes across in the development plans.59 In other words, development professionals must place themselves and their egos last, after those who are considered to be the “underclass” – those whose needs development professionals are meant to be addressing. This, he claims, is a more difficult task than the one introduced above in his aforementioned contribution. As he writes, “To put the last first is the easier half. Putting the first last is harder. For it means that those who are powerful have to step down, sit, listen, and learn from and empower those who are weak and last.”60 Chambers makes it clear that the reality imposed upon “lowers” by “uppers” through development schemes is, all too often, one that does not relate to the reality that the former lives in. He comments that development practitioners tend to be “out of touch, out of date and wrong.”61 They are said to be out of touch as a result of their elite position in society. He then asks how one can expect that an expert will understand poor

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The Participation Paradox

people’s realities, which are “local, complex, diverse, dynamic and unpredictable” if he or she is not anywhere near these realities.62 To counteract this, Chambers discusses a situation where the relationship between the developers and beneficiaries must be one that encompasses role reversals. Rather than going into an area thinking they know what is best for the beneficiaries, the developers look to the people in the area for answers. In this way, insider or local knowledge is to be put ahead of expert knowledge, thus humbling the outsider. Like Freire, power in Chambers’ view lies with the external change agent or mediator. Those who are considered to be first in the development process (the developers of a given project) must put themselves last. These ideas helped further inform and mainstream the view that beneficiaries of development projects were no longer to be viewed as passive recipients of development aid. Rather, their energy was considered to be a component integral to the success of projects. Following from the key points made by pra, The World Bank Participation Source Book, published in 1996, contrasted the “participatory stance” with the “external expert stance.”63 This guide for mediators or change agents remarked that ordinary people should collectively participate in every aspect of development, from the conceptualization of the project through to implementation and monitoring and evaluation. While this may seem a somewhat radical alternative to top-down decision making, the World Bank clarified its own political agenda in the report as well: As the capacity of poor people is strengthened and their voices begin to be heard, they become “clients” who are capable of demanding and paying for goods and services from the government and private sector agencies. Under these changed circumstances, the mechanisms to satisfy their needs will change as well. In this context, it becomes necessary to move away from welfare oriented approaches and focus rather on such things as building sustainable, market-based financial systems.64 The ultimate goal of the World Bank is not to emancipate people from oppressive systems of power nor to enable the state to deliver to the dispossessed. Instead, the World Bank’s conceptualization of participation is part of a strategy to shrink the state and to get poor people to rely on the market. “We reach the far end of the continuum [of participation in development],” the Bank argues, “when these clients ultimately become the owners and managers of their assets and activities.”65 The World

Participation’s “Decapitation”

19

Bank’s practice and understanding of participation represents the epitome of mainstream approaches. In this way, participation is depoliticized and a technical fix. Referring to Rahnema, who wrote at the beginning of the pra boom, Williams says that its rapid growth was “an indication that it had already been politically ‘tamed,’ and was serving important economic, institutional and legitimating functions for a mainstream vision of development.”66 Because participation is compatible with a neoliberal agenda such as that of the World Bank, Williams questions whether “the recent explosion of ‘participatory’ practices and discourse represents a radical paradigm shift, or the active de-politicization, of international development.”67 Williams argues that the latter is a much more accurate depiction of what participation represents in reality. He then identifies three criticisms regarding the way in which this concept and practice had been mainstreamed. First, he argues that “participation stresses personal reform over political struggle.”68 It seems to be assumed that as long as “uppers” and “lowers” can meet together to come to a consensus in which all are satisfied, there is no need for broader political struggles. Secondly, participatory approaches to development assume that struggles over development must happen at a local level where a supposedly homogenous community exists. They therefore tend to romanticize the community and pay inadequate attention to inequalities within it. By “handing over the stick” the voices of those who have existing material and symbolic power are likely to be amplified. Gender inequalities may be reproduced and women as well as transgender people further silenced by participatory processes. Even when gender and women’s inclusion is flagged by the “mediator” this will likely be part of a “primarily technical corrective” disarticulated from questions of how to challenge patriarchy in the broader community.69 The tendency to focus on obtaining local knowledge hides wider processes of politics that occur at a national and global level (processes which may themselves, following Freire, undermine what can happen at the local level). It is argued that participatory processes isolate what happens at the local level from wider political and economic structures.70 The third critique is that participation has become “the new tyranny.” According to Williams, “The argument is that participation actively ‘depoliticizes’ development; incorporating marginalized individuals in development projects that they are unable to question … producing ‘grassroots’ knowledge ignorant of its own partiality … and foreclosing discussion of alternative visions of development.”71

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The Participation Paradox

In one of the earliest radical critiques, Rahnema referred to a process which he called “professionalizing grassroots activities.” He observed that the celebrated mediators or development saints of social transformation in poor communities, who were supposedly intended to empower or liberate the oppressed, were in fact contaminated by their own politics: [T]he change agent often ended up by exceeding his [or her] role as a catalyst beyond all recognition. Acting, in most cases, as a promoter or professional of participation, rather than a sensitive party to a process of mutual learning, he [or she] became sometimes a militant ideologue, sometimes a self-appointed authority on people’s needs and strategies to meet them, and often a “barefoot developer” lacking the professional competence of the expert … The change, of which they considered themselves the agents, was only the projection of a predefined ideal of change, often highly affected by their own perceptions of the world and their own ideological inclinations.72 Indeed, the early twenty-first century witnessed the further consolidation of participatory approaches within the dominant development paradigm. The World Bank’s Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us?73 was arguably one of the largest international research projects ever undertaken in an attempt to better understand the world through the lens of poor people. It involved major research projects in twenty-three countries, including material gathered from 60,000 respondents, and informed the World Development Report of 2000/2001 on Poverty and Development. The project and book made “heart-felt calls for all development institutions to pay closer attention to the needs, aspirations, and subjectivities of the planet’s marginalised classes and to consider how these might influence development policy.”74 Within this framework, the poor’s voices should be heard and amplified but they should not seek to obtain any form of substantial power that could challenge the hegemonic order. The World Bank, alongside other leading international and national institutions, has, since the 1980s and 1990s, consistently put forth that for development to be successful, poor people must participate in decision making that affects their lives. Because mainstream approaches are used as a means to an end, critics have doubted its transformative potential. In 2000, Cornwall revealed these perceptions by arguing that: “There is less cause for celebration. Their

Participation’s “Decapitation”

21

[mainstream] concerns centre on the use of participation as a legitimating device that draws on the moral authority of claims to involve the poor to place the pursuit of other agendas beyond reproach. According to this perspective, most of what is hailed as ‘participation’ is a mere technical fix that leaves inequitable global and local relations of power, and with it the root causes of poverty, unchallenged.”75 No one, it would seem, could argue with this approach. Indeed, the slippery nature of the term enables it to be used to achieve virtually any outcome.76 It is therefore essential to grasp the politics, or the ideological underpinning, of participation if one is to examine its potential. Cooke lamented that the World Bank has “appropriated participatory discourse and methods,” and points out that “the World Bank is an organisation that sees more neoliberalism as the remedy for the problems it has visited on the world’s poor; and … it uses participatory methodologies and practitioners to enforce that agenda.”77 As participation became mainstreamed in development and governance processes worldwide over the past half century, radical or anti-capitalist approaches associated with the work of Paulo Freire have largely (albeit not completely) been abandoned. In about ten years, from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s, the World Bank spent more than US$85 billion to promote participatory approaches to development.78 The two decades since the emergence of the critique presented above have witnessed a flood of participatory techniques in governments, educational institutions and corporations alike. To listen to the voices of people or “to hand over the stick” appear at face value to be noble acts, but too often this masks a broader topdown process which reinforces existing relations of power. Polletta effectively sums up the political ways in which the meaning and practice of participation has evolved: “One might say that the late 1960s were similarly marked by a widespread enthusiasm for participation. But participatory institutions then were seen as firmly outside the establishment. Today, they are the establishment.”79 Participation can be both a tool for liberation and oppression. Its possibility for creating space for challenging top-down decision-making processes may be outweighed by “the twilight of equality” and poverty inflicted by neoliberal capitalism.80 The promises and pitfalls of the shift from participatory development to participatory governance internationally are highlighted in the next chapter. This sets the stage for the chapter’s critique of those scholars and activists who seek to amplify the voices of the poor in South Africa before it homes in on the case study of Them-

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The Participation Paradox

belihle, which has been pitched as one of the quintessential sites for radical participatory governance in the post-apartheid period. The idea of the participation paradox is used as a pivot for analysing the promise of achieving what is arguably its foundational goal: that is, overcoming oppressive structures in society while in the process transforming the lives of the poor and working class.

Ice/Water on the Move

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2 Recasting the Development “Saints”

As participation was incorporated into the hegemonic discourse of development internationally, so too did its theory and practice become firmly linked to the idea of “good governance.” Not only did the typical neoliberal pundits such as the World Bank adopt this approach but progressive scholars and social movement activists from the 1990s and 2000s did so as well. In part as a response to the success of the neoliberal project and the suggestion that society had reached “the end of history,” a significant coterie of influential scholars, such as the late Eric Olin Wright, who had self-identified as left and even Marxist, sought to challenge the dominant pessimistic narrative by placing their hopes in real-life alternatives or what were termed “the real utopias.”1 Out of this dream emerged the need to “deepen democracy” in order to achieve the end goal: “empowered participatory governance” (epg). I argue however that while epg can potentially challenge neoliberalism, it is often bound by the same limits as participatory development. epg appears like a pure and noble cause at face value, but it is far from a panacea. Its proponents seek to amplify the voices of the poor in local state interventions, and yet it does not sufficiently challenge broader relations of power on a regional, national, and international scale. It is paradoxically therefore often a counter-productive tool for the self-determination of the dispossessed in South Africa and elsewhere. epg “aspire[s] to deepen the ways in which ordinary people can effectively participate in and influence politics which directly affect their lives.” To put it another way, “they are participatory because they rely upon the commitment and capacities of ordinary people to make sensible decisions through reasoned deliberation and empowered because they attempt to tie action to discussion.”2 Instead of “rolling back the state” for more

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The Participation Paradox

neoliberal or market-driven interventions, it would become the focal point for transformation. Institutional change in governance processes combined with a strong civil society sector was deemed necessary to create more open channels to access existing government institutions. “Deregulation, privatisation, reduction of social services and curtailments of state spending have been the watchwords,” wrote Fung and Olin Wright. What is required instead is “participation, greater responsiveness, more creative and effective forms of democratic state intervention.”3 The Real Utopias project was an ambitious undertaking to find and elucidate alternatives on a global scale to what was considered a failed system: capitalism. In contrast to conventional Marxist approaches to socialism, Olin Wright suggests that rather than the state being in control of the distribution of resources and ownership of property, society should be. “If democracy is the label for the subordination of state power to social power,” he argues, “‘socialism’ is the term for the subordination of economic power to social power.”4 From inner-city upgrading of public schools and policing in Chicago in the US to the devolution of fiscal resources to villages in Kerala, India, participatory governance was elaborated and theorized in-depth by the Real Utopias project. But the form that arguably took centre stage in Olin Wright’s vision was the example of participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre. It was, according to Olin Wright, “an enormous success” which provided, “the raw material for elaborating a set of general principles of institutional design for invigorating direct democracy.”5 On the back of the election of the Workers’ Party (pt) in Brazil, the city of Porto Alegre’s theory and practice of participatory budgeting has long been touted as a “success story of ‘how the left can govern.’”6 Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s it was viewed as a model case of how municipal level changes can encourage participation by the poor urban folk. Thousands of people regularly attended weekly meetings to deliberate on decisions about urban budgets and investment priorities. According to Baiocchi and Ganuza, participatory budgeting was linked to “administrative reform” which “improved the administrative machinery, improved the conditions of poor people, and established a new way of administering that would eventually cause admiration elsewhere.”7 Today it is practiced in more than 1,500 cities globally. In 1997 it received a prize for “best practice” from the un Development Programme, and it was arguably the hallmark of the World Social Forum debates which took place, not coincidentally, in Porto Alegre in 2001, 2002, and 2003.8 Participatory budgeting in Brazil

Recasting the Development “Saints”

25

was successful and other similar programs in countries across the world could be as well for one underlying reason: it contributed to a situation in which citizens were granted “unimpeded access to government.”9 But this proposed model for participatory governance did not develop without a critique, however marginal this has been to debates. Sergio Baierle’s article, “The Porto Alegre Thermidor? Brazil’s Participatory Budgeting at the Crossroads,” provided a much needed counterpoint to tendencies which appeared to romanticize the political possibilities emanating from the Porto Alegre experiment at the time.10 Rather than serving as a mechanism through which the dispossessed achieve emancipation, he suggested that participatory budgeting may be a useful tool for maintaining the hegemonic power of capital. In Baierle’s view it “runs the risk of being side-tracked by an old impulse: to put the plebeians back ‘in their place.’”11 He therefore questions what will happen when citizens in Brazil extend their demands beyond immediate reforms – when they seek “real power.”12 “Porto Alegre is not an oasis in a neoliberal desert,” and he therefore concludes that “it is impossible to avoid the consequences of macropolitics of adjustment imposed at the federal level.”13 Participation, in this line of thinking, is a technology or mechanism which serves the neoliberal notion of “good governance.” It is arguably a reflection of ruling class ideology to the extent that it enables them “to reconstruct direct relations with a clientele in the popular classes.”14 Participatory budgeting is effectively part of the “new ‘common sense,’” one that “envisages the transference of social policy management to the community level.”15 Baierle likens this to the “philanthropic management of poverty in Victorian Britain,” which he sees as a means by which to stave off “class struggle.”16 Workers, trade unions and community-based organizations would be depoliticized, even deemed irrelevant, outside of their involvement in state institutions which promote participatory budgeting: “the ‘subjectivity’ that corporate logic intends to eliminate is precisely their political character – their capacity to organize class actions that place pressure on governments, their capacity for social revolt.”17 Scholars have indeed maintained that the fundamental difference between Brazil and countries such as Mexico, India, and South Africa is that “insurgent citizens,” to borrow from Holston,18 have direct access to state and urban authorities in Brazil.19 But what happens when social movements are closed off from access to state institutions? Despite the mainstreaming of participation and participatory governance discourse, it is not unreasonable to conclude that this is the case throughout most of the world. This book takes as a starting point that grassroots movements

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The Participation Paradox

constitute and enact participatory forms of governance. The South African case, which is explored in depth in this chapter, highlights that the participation paradox unfolds not only in relation to the state’s institutions but also within grassroots movements. It is therefore necessary to explore the multi-faceted ways in which they frame their demands and how they envision their relationship to the state. Just as the politics underpinning state forms of participatory governance must be evaluated against their ability to create alternatives outside of the existing neoliberal framework, so too must grassroots movements be evaluated on that same basis. Perhaps nowhere is the idea that the voices of the oppressed should shine through in decision-making processes about local development priorities more potent than in post-apartheid South Africa. It was largely the collective mobilization, self-determination, and popular participation of Black people that created the possibility of overthrowing the white minority apartheid government. The African National Congress (anc) was elected into power as Nelson Mandela became the country’s first Black president in 1994: the so-called “negotiated miracle” or “rainbow nation” ushered in one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. But it soon became abundantly clear that any meaningful version of popular participation, wherein community-based organizations would play a key role in determining wide-ranging policies, would be swiftly watered down. The next section suggests that in post-apartheid South Africa, the anc facilitated a situation in which citizens had limited ability to redirect certain resources within the neoliberal state as well as its attendant cost recovery policies. Mirroring international experiences, the state also used participation as a means by which to implement top-down decision-making processes to further marginalize the poor. The section which follows details the shift from a “people-driven” to a neoliberal or market-oriented approach to development in the South African context from the 1980s to the mid-1990s, while the section thereafter homes in on the politics of social movements and popular protest that have emerged since the late 1990s, in part as a response to this. South Africa has a strong history of a militant and powerful notion of people’s power deeply rooted in community-based movements or what were called civics. The idea of development “saints” was introduced in the previous chapter as a metaphor which describes the voices of grassroots activists who can supposedly do no wrong in the eyes of God.20 Scholars and activists who repeat the mantra that the voices of the poor should come to the fore in policy making and decision-making processes are, as the metaphor

Recasting the Development “Saints”

27

goes, honoured for their humanity. A reflection of the neoliberal mechanism through which the dispossessed are put in their place, “domesticated,” this likely makes Freire turn in his grave. The chapter then suggests that, although Thembelihle is often depicted as the quintessential site of radical participatory governance, scholars have nevertheless tended to obscure ideology and the politics of voice in this community and elsewhere. As detailed in the previous chapter, obtaining voice, as an end in itself, may appear to be neutral or even empowering but, paradoxically, serve to maintain the existing status quo. This liberal approach suggests that the poor must speak up but only within the parameters of neoliberal ideological frameworks. The participation of trade unions in decision-making processes throughout the transition to democracy in South Africa and especially in the two years following the first democratic elections in 1994 was arguably intended to empower the neoliberal Growth Employment and Redistribution (gear) policy which was essentially a carbon copy of the “Washington Consensus.” As became evident in the late 1990s and early 2000s civil society was to be kept at bay. Repression and police brutality became arguably the main feature of the state’s initially top-down response to popular unrest. Following the World Bank’s trajectory, the party promoted neoliberal forms of governance while also using the rhetoric and language of participation. As I have argued elsewhere, the “‘hidden’ terms within which reformed participation” occurs as a result of the South Africa state’s concessions to popular mobilization and unrest should be given more serious attention.21 On the one hand, this book demonstrates the ways in which the neoliberal state reasserts its power, rendering resistance relatively futile. Not only are institutional spaces of engagement depoliticized but radical grassroots movements may also, counter-intuitively, buy into participatory processes which reinforce rather than challenge existing relations of power. Despite the most progressive intentions, without a formidable counter-power capable of state intervention, participation more often than not becomes a pawn in the hands of authorities bent on maintaining the status quo. On the other, as we shall see, a small minority of activists in Thembelihle provide a socialist alternative rooted in the direct experiences of the working class and thereby lay the foundation for building a mass-based political movement that can challenge the anc. In the last section of this chapter, the methodological approach undertaken for the research in this book is outlined in relation to the case study (Thembelihle), in order to provide the basis for unravelling the participation paradox in the rest of the book.

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The Participation Paradox

mainstreaming participation in post-apartheid south africa The apartheid state’s Black Local Authorities (blas) were often regarded as illegitimate even before they were elected because they intended to legitimize raising revenue from the townships. They had virtually no power and instead of delivering much needed basic services to Black people, they collected finances from them. In this twisted vision, not only would the oppressed pay for apartheid through their cheap labour in the system of racial capitalism, but should also formally finance the apartheid state. The Vaal bla’s first act was to raise rents, which understandably fuelled resident’s anger and sparked the 1984 uprisings. Particularly in the late ’70s and into the early ’80s, civic movements employed a wide range of tactics to delegitimize the local government, including electoral boycotts and burning councillors’ homes to get them to resign. By the mid1980s, Black township activists from across South Africa had risen up in an unprecedented manner to delegitimize and challenge the apartheid state. However, prior to the establishment of the United Democratic Front (udf) in 1983, civics largely operated in isolation from each other on single-issue campaigns. The udf became the main umbrella organization for the anti-apartheid movement. When the South African National Civic Organisation (sanco) was launched in 1992, it brought together under a single national umbrella many of the most important civic organizations that had played a pivotal role in the anti-apartheid struggle. In the early 1990s, these civics were also in the forefront of struggles and negotiations to reconfigure local municipalities to reflect the power and interests of working-class communities. During its early stages, sanco played a significant role in shaping the Local Government Transition Act. Also, non-governmental organizations (ngos) such as Planact which was like an anti-apartheid urban “service organisation” had attempted to fill the worst gaps left by the state. It made sense therefore that this organization would be called to play a role in the post-apartheid period. According to Heller and Ntlokonkulu, “Through Planact, sanco had a role in shaping the rdp [Reconstruction and Development Programme] chapter on housing. And the rdp as a whole assigned a direct and critical role for the civics in the transformation process.”22 In the early 1990s, sanco articulated a radical and transformative development program which rested on the two crucial pillars of popular participation and eliminating poverty. sanco’s vision was that civics were intended to be rooted within the community and to secure the par-

Recasting the Development “Saints”

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ticipation of marginal groups, and what was sometimes called the interests of the “working class.”23 sanco evolved, to a certain extent, out of the tradition of resistance against apartheid. Mzwanele Mayekiso, then secretary of the Alexandra Civic Organisation (aco, which later became sanco), came to symbolize to some activists the desire to connect Marxist thinking to civic practice. In 1992, just before the launch of sanco, he argued, “If the movement within the anc towards meeting basic needs begins to fail, it is logical to expect that working-class organs will continue to press for programmes that meet those needs.”24 Civil society was arguably intended not as a support network for the anc state’s development trajectory but rather as a means by which to bring about a significant redistribution of wealth to the working class. In one of its most radical interpretations, Mayekiso confirmed that the essence of working-class civil society is “to empower classconscious communities whose good relations with a progressive democratic state will permit a redistribution of wealth that also leads to new social relations.”25 The need for participation, and particularly civics, to play a key role in reconstruction and development in post-apartheid South Africa was also highlighted by the anc’s policy documents and, initially, this seemed to hold promise for those who believed that community-based organizations should play a key role in directing development. The transition to democracy brought about a situation in which the state used past experiences of civics and the role that they played in local development and antiapartheid resistance to inform the meanings and practices of participation that would be necessary to bring about transformation in post-apartheid South Africa. The participatory culture of the anti-apartheid struggle informed the rdp, which was intended to be the major policy document by which development in South Africa would be informed. In regard to civil society, it claimed that “trade unions and other mass organizations must be actively involved in democratic public policymaking.”26 It emphasized the need for people’s participation in the development process beyond electoral politics: “Above all, the people affected must participate in decision-making. Democratization must begin to transform both the state and civil society. Democracy is not confined to periodic elections. It is, rather, an active process enabling everyone to contribute to reconstruction and development.”27 Furthermore, the rdp places specific stress on the empowerment of the poor. It emphasizes the necessity of empowerment of ordinary citizens: “The central objective of our rdp is to improve the quality of life of all

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The Participation Paradox

South Africans, and in particular the most poor and marginalized sections of our communities. This objective should be realized through a process of empowerment which gives the poor control over their lives and increases their ability to mobilize sufficient development resources, including from the democratic government where necessary.”28 In what appears to be a reference to self-governance activities during the struggle against apartheid, the rdp says the poor must have “control over their lives” and, further, that the poor should be able to “mobilise resources from the democratic government.”29 The rhetoric of the rdp could be seen to represent the post-apartheid government’s commitment to developing the embryo of people’s power that began during apartheid. With the anc’s rise to power, however, the discourse and practice of popular participation in development changed dramatically. sanco was no longer viewed as an organization that could challenge state power but instead largely became a vehicle through which the anc could implement development from above. As Heller and Ntlokonkulu explain, sanco ceded its power to the anc: “In the euphoric aftermath of South Africa’s first democratic elections – quickly followed up by local government elections – the extraordinary mass legitimacy enjoyed by the new representative government all but eclipsed the more direct and participatory forms of democracy championed by the civics. In its efforts to secure its position in the alliance, sanco all but ruled out protest actions, depriving the movement of a key mobilisational tool and source of strategic leverage.”30 Furthermore, the leadership and organizational capacity of sanco to represent civic structures on the ground was undermined by its support for anc structures, especially civic leaders’ drive to become part of the anc local government. After the local government elections of 1995 and 1996, civics perhaps predictably became involved in building anc party branches rather than the capacity of grassroots organizations to assert power over the development process. Nelson Mandela and other anc members argued that civil society must move away from resistance politics and that it must now act as a service-delivery agent for the state’s development trajectory. This had the effect of co-opting civil society into state designed service-delivery projects. Civil-society organizations, though key in ending apartheid, would move from protest politics to the politics of development. Gumede explains that the anc supported this position: “The one thing the anc knew was that it did not want radical civil society groups acting as watchdogs over the government, as they had under apartheid. At the party’s national conference in 1997, Mandela lambasted organizations and

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activists, such as sanco’s Mzwanele Mayekiso ... for believing that civil society organizations should indeed play such a role and serve as channels for grassroots communities to voice their grievances and expectations.”31 Former President Thabo Mbeki and other anc leaders therefore had a tendency, particularly in the first years of democracy, to label opposition “ultra-left” and thus perceive opposition as being opposed to progress. This stance was not against participation per se but against any participation that was outside the anc’s plans. Greenstein suggests that the germ was set in the 1980s. Following from the anti-apartheid movement’s struggle against a common enemy (white minority rule), he suggests, the idea that local struggles must be subordinated in the name of national unity has been carried over to the post-apartheid era.32 To a significant extent, then, participation was to occur within specific boundaries never intended to challenge decisions made by the state. The organs of people’s power had the potential to be nurtured in the post-apartheid period and thereby to become an example of an institutional innovation in participatory governance that could be emulated around the world. Referring to only a few global examples which exemplify the significance of popular struggles, including Brazil, Wainwright made reference to the transformative nature of South Africa’s civics. She placed her hope in the ruling party, arguing that they “could have been the basis for the strengthening of the anc by creating deeper means of popular control over the state apparatus, something urgently needed in post-apartheid South Africa.”33 Brooks, Runciman, and Ngwane have pointed out that “The experience and practice of [the liberation] struggle engendered for many people the vision of a participatory democratic future.”34 However, once the anc came into power, the party repressed social movements and popular resistance and thinned out local democracy.35 The state’s hollowing out of participatory democracy occurred in tandem with the adoption of the neoliberal Growth Employment and Redistribution (gear) policy of the anc. Yet the state could not continue for long to define the terms within which citizens participated and, from the late 1990s, social movements initiated alternative practices of popular participation. The next section critically evaluates recent literature on the emergence of social movements and popular participation in the South African context. It is suggested that underplaying the internal dynamics and politics of popular participation and the limits imposed by neoliberal capitalism may lead South Africa’s seemingly progressive scholars and activists to fall into the same trap as Rahnema’s “development saints.”36

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south africa’s development “saints” Building on a Marxist-Freirean approach, this book explores the potential for popular participation to provide an anti-capitalist alternative in South Africa and beyond. The dominant development paradigm, neoliberal capitalism, is thus conceptualized as the “enemy” or what Ngwane has called the “beast.”37 In response to the failure of institutional mechanisms of participation to achieve transformation across the globe, and in South Africa in particular, scholars have looked to alternative conceptualizations of participation. In doing so, they often create a misleading, supposedly neat binary that distinguishes between invited forms (those induced by the state or ngos, for example) and invented forms (which are formed at the grassroots and may constitute social movements). Invented spaces or grassroots organizations may be locally democratic, but since they do not operate in a vacuum, they must also be subjected to the same political principles and structural analysis as invited spaces. Certain material gains have been made in South Africa since 1994 in terms of electricity provision, housing and water, and sanitation for the working class, but it has now been widely documented that poverty and inequality have become more deeply entrenched.38 Indeed, access to electricity increased to 86 per cent of households in 2015 while, at that time, 90 per cent had access to piped water.39 According to Statistics South Africa, the proportion of those in South Africa without access to piped water decreased from 19.7 per cent in 1996 to 10.1 per cent in 2016.40 While the anc championed the delivery of houses to the poor in the late 1990s, the “willing buyer, willing seller” approach to land distribution, alongside urban influx and low wages, led to a situation in which about 13 per cent of households, down from 16.2 per cent in 1996, continued to eke out an existence in informal dwellings or shacks by the mid-2010s.41 Amongst these shack dwellers live those with the lowest household incomes: this is roughly nine million people and obviously includes the residents of Thembelihle.42 The Oxfam South Africa’s inequality report from 2020 draws on World Bank statistics to suggest that South Africa ranks among the most unequal countries in the world. Black women in the bottom 10 per cent of incomes make, on average, r1 for every r461 made by the average ceo (who tends to be white and male).43 Moreover, 70 per cent of the country’s wealth is owned by 20 per cent of its people. This is part of the story which helps explain how 90 per cent of the population owns just 10 per cent of the wealth. oza concludes that: “Most people’s income and

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2.1 Shack constructed of metal and brick in yard. A typical yard in Thembelihle showing a shack connected to another structure built of brick.

wealth levels in South Africa are determined at birth. If you do not have the right start in life, shelter, quality healthcare and education, educated parents with good paying jobs, then you are most likely to live a life of poverty. The earnings of nine out of ten people once they enter the labour market are determined by what their parents earned.”44 While this is the case to an extent with other countries across the world, in South Africa the fall of apartheid has led to the creation of spaces for Black Economic Empowerment (bee), a policy of the South African government which aims to promote the economic upliftment of those who were victims of apartheid. In practice this policy has led to the advancement of only a small minority of Black people, creating the illusion that an individual’s failure is because of personal character rather than systemic problems. Following the anc’s “elite transition”45 and what has also been called the country’s “corporatised liberation,”46 basic services such as water and electricity were commodified. Inequality was “accentuated” by neoliberal macroeconomic policy and deepened the crisis under each democratic president since 1994.47 With the “predatory state” associated with then anc President Jacob Zuma’s rule for nearly a decade until 2018, “state cap-

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ture” has also allowed looting of much needed funds that could have been used for service programs in poor communities. This amounted to an estimated r1.5 trillion in 2019 or nearly one third of gross domestic product (gdp).48 Prior to this unfolding saga, seemingly progressive scholars in South Africa shifted their attention to “new” social movements from the late 2000s and thereafter to more localized forms of resistance in townships and other working-class communities which have been termed the “rebellion of the poor”; these are movements which emerged as a response to neoliberalism and the rolling back of the state. The rise of service delivery protests in poor communities from 2004, the emergence of #FeesMustFall in 2015 and 2016, wherein university students demanded state funding for free decolonized education across the higher education sector and an independent workers’ movement in the platinum mines from the early to mid-2010s, highlighted the triple-pronged movement of ordinary people in South Africa in communities, schools, and workplaces. South African scholars in this context have not been immune to the “participatory turn” or “participatory revolution.”49 They have described in detail and in a variety of contexts how large numbers of citizens consistently engage in institutional channels intended for the public,50 the agency of residents and their tendency to “wait for the state,”51 and the failure of these mechanisms to enable citizen participation in the country,52 as well as in Johannesburg in particular.53 While internationally scholars investigated participatory practices by left-leaning parties and social movements including, for example, Occupy and Podemos (more on the latter in chapter four),54 a range of prominent South African scholars called for “participation” by the “insurgent” grassroots55 and “democratisation” of decision-making processes more generally.56 Others urge the need to actively listen to the poor,57 open up space for “the right to protest,”58 or locate the hopes for a brighter future in “disruptive” action.59 While the state has tended to respond with repression and, in some cases, by engaging with leaders of the organizations which they are part of, this scholarship suggests that the forms of protest are or should be considered to be legitimate sites of engagement. It tends to be assumed that resistance, or participation from below, is not only a response to the exclusive nature of neoliberal policies but that it necessarily is likely to provide a concrete alternative. To put it another way, a binary has been created: invited spaces of the government (of the anc) exclude the poor whereas invented spaces (developed autonomously at the grassroots) are necessarily inclusive. Referring to the ways in which “invited” spaces of participation may monitor and control the kinds of voices that are able to be addressed in

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them, Miraftab indicates that, “just as liberal views assigned the citizenshipgranting agency to the state, the neoliberal view assigns the state the agency to grant status as civil society as well, and to define the spaces where citizenship can be practiced.”60 It is argued that invented spaces, at the grassroots, are of equal importance: The insurgent grassroots actions by the poor to protect the roofs above their heads and their access to basic services, as described in this article, are as important as officially sanctioned grassroots actions to produce shelter. Should the planning profession hope to improve its relevance to those grassroots processes that shape and reshape the urban reality, it will need to include in its recognition of the poor’s self-help strategies those insurgent practices they employ to achieve their right to the neoliberal cities.61 The tendency extends beyond the immediate field of development, participatory governance, and social movements. In their bid to build a counter-hegemonic theory and practice in the media sphere in postapartheid South Africa, Reid and Mckinley exact the development saint approach to power and politics. The true saviours must come down to earth – to the grassroots – to practice “listening journalism,” the authors urge, so that those who are “voiceless” in the mainstream media can be allowed to speak. The introductory first chapter highlights “Elite, middleclass and economically secure voices have always been mediated in abundance, relative to the voices of the poor and working classes. Importantly, when some segments of society experience a lack of voice, when these are not listened to or heard, societal, political and cultural fissures and/or inequalities naturally arise. Denying voice to some has a material impact. Simply put, when everyone has a voice it is better for society.”62 Friedman’s central argument in Power in Action: Democracy, Citizenship and Social Justice is that democracy in South Africa and elsewhere cannot work until all people have “equal say” or power to determine decisionmaking processes that affect their lives.63 Collective action is therefore both an essential ingredient of, and a means to achieve, democracy. Echoing World Bank discourse of the 1980s and 1990s, he seeks to persuade readers that: Democratisation does not mean foisting a template on societies. On the contrary, it means empowering and enabling people to reject the templates which do not work and to choose the social forms which,

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in their view, do. And it means overcoming the powerlessness, real and perceived, which prevents most citizens from engaging in collective action that holds power to account and ensures that decision-making is as much as possible an expression of popular sovereignty rather than elite preference.64 Liberal scholars such as these rarely, if at all, mention the word capitalism except in passing. When popular participation is disarticulated from this broader process of social change, neoliberal capitalism is taken for granted or assumed: it is our “common sense.” To the extent that participation is necessary or possible, it occurs within the framework of, and arguably reinforces, capitalism. Service delivery protests over state delivery of water, electricity, and housing have been important sites of community engagement and popular participation and remain a key feature of the South African social and political landscape. Between 2005 and 2017 there were more recorded protests than in previous years and they also became more militant or disruptive. The Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg distinguishes between “orderly, disruptive and violent protests.” They suggest that “orderly” protests are acceptable and they do not necessarily condone “violent protests,” which the authors refer to as those that destroy property or harm people.“Disruptive” protests, on the other hand, seem to signal the possibility for a degree of transformation. These authors link South Africa’s “disruptive” protests to the civil disobedience movement in the US and India. “Treating barricades as ‘violent,’” Alexander et al. argue, “delegitimises the intentions of the protesters and misconstrues the dynamics of protest.”65 Similarly Brown’s fundamental premise is that “disruption is a good in itself and not because of any particular effects that it might provoke”.66 Duncan’s Protest Nation “is a call to action to defend the right to protest” in virtually any form that it may take.67 “Political elites who fear criticism and wish to cling to power may be very tempted to stifle protests, but if they do,” Duncan argues, “they are sowing the wind.” In a bid to help create space for the voices of protestors, especially the oppressed in South Africa, she suggests that their calls will become louder until they are heard by those in power: “As the underlying grievances remain unaddressed, they may radicalize protestors who become firmer in their resolve to be heard and taken seriously, no matter what.”68 This scholarly work is important in its own right but may obscure the politics of popular participation and the potential it has, through disruption and popular education and other means, to challenge the existing status quo.

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Abahlali baseMjondolo, arguably the largest movement of shack dwellers in South Africa, appears to epitomize an untainted participatory practice that reflects the needs and concerns of those living in shacks. While the slogan “Nothing About Us Without Us” is radical especially in light of police repression, assassinations of leaders and forced evictions, it also has certain limitations. While positioning themselves as reflecting the bottomup views and voices of the “poorest of the poor,” theorists of Abahalali and other movements in South Africa have in fact imposed their own topdown agendas by acting as gatekeepers. They have positioned the shack dwellers in Durban, for example, as flawlessly autonomist and inherently apolitical. In other words, “there is a separation being introduced [from outside the settlement] between political-ideological questions and ‘bread and butter issues.’”69 Within this framework, what happens from “below” in the shacks and the voices that emerge from them are sacrosanct. What differentiates the struggles in Thembelihle from other shack dwellers’ movements is the tcc’s explicit ideological orientation to socialism which is (as we see in chapter 6) itself a contested terrain. So while it is true that the poor can’t “eat” politics or ideology, “issues of struggle, political power, the state, ideology, strategy and so on are relevant.”70 The idea of a people-centred democratic approach tends to be underdeveloped and romanticized. The dichotomy between elite and participatory democracy is not always useful since it can obscure political dynamics within heterogenous communities. There exists a vast quantity of critical literature dealing with participatory democracy, including in South Africa, but there are also very well-known cases in Brazil, India, and even the US. There is little recognition that participatory democracy has tended to be rooted within (rather than laying a challenge against) a neoliberal ideology. Without dealing with this issue, scholars and activists will be short-changed: calls for genuine democracy will arguably become embedded within government frameworks that maintain systems of oppression. South African scholars have turned to social movements and popular protest as playing a key role in transformation, democracy, and radical participation. Failing to name the enemy or “beast” as capitalism (thereby questioning the logic and thinking behind mainstream forms of marketdriven development) and to discern the strategies and tactics that may be necessary to over-throw it, these scholars have risked becoming the development saints that Majid Rahnema warned against four decades ago. Rahnema, writing at the end of the twentieth century, lamented that participation was identified as a false messiah for an inherently flawed project:

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Development gradually acquired a new face – the face of a repentant saint, ready to amend, to work in a new fashion with the poor and even to learn from them … To give itself a participatory face, and a saintly mission to serve and work with the poor, was thus the last temptation of development. By recognizing a number of facts brought to the attention of the development “church,” both by its own fieldoriented clergy and the selfless believers working with the discriminate, it could once again demonstrate its regenerative capacities.71 “This is how,” he concludes, “the word participation became part of the official development jargon.”72 Scholars and activists in the South African context need to consider the suggestion that, in their attempt to give voice to the most vulnerable, they may reproduce existing systems of oppression. Calls for participation of the poor may contribute unintentionally, as with the development saints, to the reproduction of capitalist hegemony.

thembelihle’s voice Voice, in the absence of politics or ideology, becomes a liberal slogan through which to garner support for the ruling class. As Malcolm X once said, “A man [sic] who stands for nothing will fall for anything.”73 Nowhere has this been truer than in Thembelihle, which is home to a small, extremely dedicated, consciousness-raising group of socialists keen on overthrowing the system of capitalism. I have personally witnessed grassroots activists at meetings with other political formations consistently declare, “United we stand and divided we fall.” They have offered direct solidarity with their own bodies and mobilized their community to assist seemingly unrelated grassroots struggles nationally and internationally while pointing to the “capitalist enemy” that they believe binds the entire working class into perpetual oppression. Their conceptualization of voice extends beyond liberal or legalistic frameworks into a socialist vision in which the working class as a whole collectively takes control of their own destinies. This political, ideological, dimension is often under-appreciated, leading to watered-down or warped potentialities for grassroots democracy in Thembelihle specifically and amongst the working class in general. Scholars of Thembelihle have tended to detail the lived experiences and perspectives of ordinary people at the forefront of social change, positioning the settlement as a quintessential site of grassroots democracy and popular participation in post-apartheid South Africa.

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2.2 Map of Thembelihle in South Africa. The map shows where Thembelihle informal settlement (which is in Lenasia township) sits in relation to other main cities, business districts, and nearby areas within Gauteng province. The small map in the top left corner shows Thembelihle’s location in South Africa more generally.

Thembelihle is an informal settlement situated in the township Lenasia, which is a predominantly Indian suburb about forty kilometres southwest of Johannesburg’s inner city.74 Thembelihle has been growing since the late 1980s and early 1990s when people first occupied the area. As much as residents of Thembelihle are impoverished, there is an unmistakable sense of belonging and ownership amongst the community. They were reportedly told by the anc to “take what belongs to you!”75 The area is now home to about 25,000 people living in 7,000 to 8,000 shacks. Nelson Mandela is reported to have visited Thembelihle in 1994 to promise upgrading and infrastructure, and the settlement became a beacon for residents who flooded into the area with the hope of a better life. But, with cost recovery policies associated with the adoption of neoliberal policies in the form of the anc’s gear policy, by the end of the 1990s and beginning of the 2000s, residents faced further marginalization due to evictions and water and electricity cut-offs. Johannesburg, the economic hub of South Africa, aspires to become a “world class African city.” Initially a mining camp centred on gold in the

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late nineteenth century, the city is today the country’s most significant contributor to the economy and includes about five million people. It is tempting to treat the neoliberal state as homogenous and static but the state is in fact both regionally specific and also changes over time in response to various pressures including those which result from popular mobilization. In order to avoid treating the struggles of Thembelihle as isolated from these processes, it is useful to very briefly consider how the local state in Johannesburg has changed over time especially since the first democratic elections in 1994. Li Pernegger’s The Antagonistic City provides a grounded and astute history of the relationship between protest, the local state, and popular participation in post-apartheid Johannesburg. Rather than silencing and suppressing, Pernegger places hope in an “Agonistic state” that: accepts that conflict, including protests outside procedurally prescribed frameworks, is a potentially creative and constructive force for continued democratic advancement. An agonistic state keeps the space open for expressions of dissensus rather than trying to sidestep conflict through formal consensus-seeking mechanisms.76 Taking as a starting point that bottom-up or participatory democracy is desirable and possible under the (neoliberal) state, her consistent suggestion is that the state needs to adopt a “positive approach to conflict.”77 When the late 1990s and early 2000s saw the emergence of isolated groupings of protests in the city in response to the protest including, for example in Orange Farm and Soweto, the local state was antagonistic and hostile.78 In response to growing frustration resulting in protests and land occupations over the slow pace of land and housing distribution in informal settlements and on the outskirts of the city, forced evictions signified (as it did in Thembelihle) the ultimate top-down approach to local development and governance. Protests intensified in the mid-2000s with about 174 held between 2006 and 2010 (more than twice the previous five-year timeframe), which prompted the city to rethink its relationship to popular struggles in local communities by emphasising state accountability.79 In the early 2010s police brutality in popular mobilizations grabbed public attention indicating that the government in fact maintained a mainly antagonistic relationship to grassroots mobilization. The brutal police killing of Andries Tatane who was shot with rubber bullets while protesting for water and sanitation, as well as the thirty-four mineworkers gunned down by the

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police while striking for better wages on 16 August 2012, are etched in the consciousness of many grassroots activists in South Africa. In the period that followed in the mid-2010s there was a growing recognition that the City of Johannesburg should “prioritise marginalised areas,”80 in particular where people were leading militant protests. The decision by the anc government to formalize and electrify Thembelihle in 2015 following major unrest in the community over a fifteen-year period must be seen in this context. Thembelihle is located in Region G of the City of Johannesburg, which borders the infamous Soweto township and Johannesburg South, and has amongst the highest rates of unemployment in the country. The region is made up of both formal housing and shacks and includes approximately 270,000 people. According to the City of Johannesburg, “The bulk of the housing in these formal settlements still falls in the lower income bracket. And the large informal settlements [such as Thembelihle], especially in the south, suffer from extreme poverty and unemployment.”81 The relatively middle-class Indian population has consistently complained about safety and argues that the nearby informal settlements undermine their property values.82 Statistics about Thembelihle’s ward, Ward Eight in Region G, are somewhat dated but nevertheless paint a picture of its demographics. According to the census for 2011, this ward includes just more than 40,000 people of which 73.5 per cent are Black, 23.8 per cent are Indian/Asian, 1.9 per cent Coloured, and 0.5 per cent classified as “other.”83 Income levels in 2012 were very low: “50 per cent of the population has no income and about 62 per cent of the remainder earn less than r1500 a month, indicating that the majority live below the breadline.”84 Ward Eight includes extensions two, six, nine, and ten. There are two other informal settlements in the ward – Lawley and Precast – but Thembelihle is the largest. Nearly half of the people in the ward live in shacks and 40 per cent record having no income. The population is particularly young with about 40 per cent made up of people under eighteen.85 With the onslaught of the political and economic crisis associated with covid-19, it is not unreasonable to conclude that these levels have either remained relatively static or gotten worse. In this context, the much-touted civic organization in the area, the Thembelihle Crisis Committee (tcc), is often uncritically cited as a radical and autonomous democratic attempt to control local development. According to Tselapedi and Dugard of the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (seri), the tcc “reclaims power” from a top-down state bent on

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2.3 Pit toilets not enough. Ventilated Improved Pit (vip) toilets like this one were constructed under the auspices of the state in 2009 and 2010. The acronym, vip, makes them sound better or more formal than they actually are. vips do not require water to flush, they consist of a pit dug in the ground with a structure around it and must be drained on a regular basis to avoid spillover and stench. The community is in an ongoing struggle to formalize the township which would provide the basis for adequate water and sanitation. Still, it should be noted that the vast majority of residents have access to water in their yards from pipes which they collectively purchased independently from the state and linked to nearby water pipes in the late 1990s.

excluding the poor from decision-making processes. The settlement, through the tcc’s leadership, offers “the hope that with sustained active citizenship, the state can be made to respond to collective demands and democracy can be consolidated.”86 The history of organizing in the settlement, the authors deduce, is “a struggle to be considered as equal citizens who are consulted about development in their area.”87 They aptly and carefully demonstrate the ways in which residents are excluded from democratic decision-making processes within and beyond the local state. To put it another way, residents must be given “voice” in a way that incorporates their demands into future development plans in the area.

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Le Roux’s research highlights the ways in which the tcc (as a social movement or “invented” space) is not isolated from the “invited” spaces of participation (in this case the ward committee); instead, they are intertwined. Advancing beyond the binaries between the two spaces, she conceptualized the engagement with ward committees by members of the tcc as a way of “contesting space.”88 While one should praise the complexity of how her study unpacked and explored the political and social dynamics, the underlying argument echoes the work of others who came before. “This dynamic,” Le Roux concludes, “has the potential to deepen democracy within South Africa’s local government.”89 Lourenco’s master’s dissertation also engages directly with the question of popular participation. It touches the surface of the key issue at hand by referring to the effects that neoliberal capitalism has on the people of Thembelihle and others living in shack settlements, but, overall, the main concern is that the local state be reformed in order to be open to the “voices” of the marginalized. There is a persistent gap, Lourenco argues, between state processes of participation and grassroots interests. Lourenco concludes that these can “coexist – but only if the state begins to recognise the agency of all citizens and is open to alternative ways of creating spaces of participation.”90 In contrast to conventional approaches, which indicate that the poor are silent and cannot speak up or “participate,” Ledwaba’s thought provoking dissertation draws from research into the case of Thembelihle (in particular the four-week stay-away in 2015, the subject of chapter five of this book) to demonstrate the ways in which residents of this settlement do, in fact, have voice. According to Ledwaba: Youth subalterns can be interpreted as marginalised youth, often viewed as inactive, passive and disinterested in participating in the political and social-economic space of the country. However, as this study shows nothing could be far[ther] from the truth. They merely participate in a different way. Attention must be drawn to this different way [of vocalising grievances]. If the voice is not necessarily lacking amongst the poor black youth what really [is] lacking is listening from the government side – hence the quest for novel means of communicating pain and grievances.91 In this view, protest or disruptive action is a means by which to attain direct democracy. In this context, we can expect militancy since “violence, it seems becomes necessary when other channels of communication are

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blocked.”92 The thrust of Ledwaba’s argument is that the perspectives or genuine voices of the poor must shine through in policy making and development practice: “Only invented [those induced from below] spaces can afford the kind of participation and participatory praxis required in a truly inclusive society.”93 Reid and McKinley, in a chapter dedicated to the case of Thembelihle, epitomize the perception that the poor must merely speak up. Like the World Bank’s “heartfelt”94 or emotional Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us? report,95 McKinley and Reed urge readers to take seriously the poor shack dwellers’ calls for community-driven development. “Simply because its residents do not yet have formal housing, do not yet have proper sanitation and do not yet have water in their homes,” the chapter concludes, “does not make Thembelihle any less of a community, any less deserving of being listened to and respected.”96 This binary, which pits a community versus the government (which can also be read as bottom-up voice versus top-down government exclusion), continues to permeate the South African and international literature. Pingo’s dissertation, “Institutionalisation of a Social Movement,” focuses specifically on the Operation Khanyisa Movement (okm), which is a socialist electoral front and political party rooted mainly in Soweto and Thembelihle (see chapter 4).97 In contrast to political parties which tend to suppress working-class dissent, the okm organizes itself on the basis of building working-class power. In 2006 and 2011, the party obtained enough support for a proportional representative (pr) councillor in local government elections. Though having obtained a tiny vote nationally, the okm arguably puts forth an ideal political form for the development of socialist consciousness and organization which is in stark contrast to conventional, bourgeois political parties. The councillor signs a pledge that states that 100 per cent of their salary will go to the electoral front itself (which is subject to democratic control) and also subjects them to immediate recall if its members can make the case that they have failed to commit their energy to the community. The party aims to convince people that a councillor can indeed be part of working-class struggles and represent the “genuine” interests of the community. Pingo effectively uses a case study of one activist in Thembelihle, Simphiwe Zwane, who was a local government okm councillor in the settlement between 2011 and 2016 (see chapter 4), in order to make the case that the tcc (and the community of Thembelihle more generally) use non-institutional forms of engagement, including protest, alongside insti-

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tutional ones (in this case electoral democracy) as a strategic and calculated means by which to create change. In her view, this represents what is arguably the “simultaneous use of two strategies” which are “contestation and cooperation.”98 In other words, the okm explicitly bridges the divide between social movements and political parties. Pingo drives home the point that “this is an innovative way to employ multiple strategies so that an alternative voice can be heard.”99 Scholars of Thembelihle tend to miss the key point: not all Thembelihleans conceptualize their “voice” independently from ideology. Voice is amplified by a significant pocket of leading activists in order to explicitly overcome systems of domination. As Ngwane’s exceptional ethnographic research on more than forty informal settlements in South Africa points out, Thembelihle’s mode of local level participatory governance is quite unique.100 The tcc is “a form of direct democracy” enacted or collectively performed outside of the framework of a liberal or bourgeois system of governance.101 An alternative arena defined by the interests of the dispossessed, it is a means by which the people make decisions on their own terms. Ngwane spends one chapter on Thembelihle and perhaps, with more space at his disposal, he would have detailed more about the relationship between the tcc and the vast majority of residents in the area as well as the limits posed by the paradoxes of participation. Through popular decision-making in mass meetings, engagements with local and provincial officials, and indeed through protest, a certain amount of tinkering with the budget can be done, perhaps to the benefit of one specific outspoken community (and Thembelihle is, as we shall see, no exception to this rule), but the fact that this occurs within a marketoriented framework of neoliberalism tends to emerge outside of the scope of what scholars, and often even activists, envision. Without politicizing participation, fundamental issues of power may be obscured. It is perhaps more likely to be used to manipulate rather than empower. The change agent becomes the local government official, the mayor at one point, and later an official with greater prominence. A fundamental principal of the approach of the international and South African scholarship which is often hidden beneath the surface in Thembelihle and beyond is the idea that the poor, the protestors, must have “voice.” Who is against this? Because the World Bank and hegemonic development agenda is not, alternative frameworks which potentially reclaim the radical roots of participation must be explored.

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encountering thembelihle It has been tempting for me to pitch the story – literally leaning in to hear and unpack voices of activists who have toiled in the streets, sometimes for decades, even facing arrest merely for crossing the streets – as a one-sided affair: the heroines and heroes of participatory governance. This is particularly the case in a context where, in some circles in the South African left, it may seem like an intellectual crime, following Chambers,102 to articulate the fact that shack dwellers do not have all the answers. And yet the movement in Thembelihle reflects the limitations of the radical left in South Africa as a whole: it is small, relatively isolated, and largely issuebased. Although one of its key objectives is to engage the wider working class and poor in a common struggle against capitalism, it has not formed part of a substantive coordinated struggle, on a national scale, against a common enemy. The previous section has highlighted the role of intellectual threads in the scholarly literature in perpetuating neoliberal ideas. This is in light of the sub-argument in the book that the oppressed risk being trapped in a perpetual cycle of participation as they struggle to obtain piecemeal welfare from the neoliberal state. The participation paradox offers lessons for those scholars who wish to witness the emancipation of the oppressed while simultaneously latching on to a depoliticized, “decapitated”103 form of popular participation or voice. In an approach eerily similar to that taken by the World Bank, it is seductive to hold up high, on a pedestal, democratic grassroots organizations.104 Our “great expectations” lie with them and so their fate could not be significantly worse. Desai suggests that this is a grave mistake and that by doing so we place them on “a cliff over which many greater revolutionary subjects than social movements have lurched. At the bottom of this cliff lie the battered bodies of organizations and individuals who simply could not live up to the promises made on their behalf.”105 The development saints who claim to represent the genuine voices and act as so-called servants of the poor are neither neutral nor apolitical.106 If the voice of the poor is an end in itself, it follows that protest itself should be translated into voice. In addition to scholars who seek reformist agendas without adequately considering the strategies and tactics necessary to overthrow neoliberalism, lawyers and ngos may position themselves as “leaders” even if unintentionally, by the very practice of promoting particular voices in South African movements: “It is not their legal or academic work and acumen we must oppose. This may come in useful from time to

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time. Rather it is the subordination of a political discourse to a legal discourse, the subordination of a radical discourse to a liberal one, the subordination of fist to voice that must be opposed.”107 The politics of leadership is important here since the strategies that leaders bring to movements “carry with them a discourse, a certain way of seeing things, of doing things, a value system.”108 What we should be debating, Desai concludes, is “how to generalize the revolt, how to broaden and deepen what is referred to as disorder.”109 A central theme that cuts through each chapter in The Participation Paradox is the contested notion of “illegality.” The so-called theft of goods within a capitalist system is not against the law or rather the policy of the tcc, which is a socialist organization. The committee’s approach is not based upon abstract or obscure theoretical jargon but instead on the practical tools necessary to emancipate the working class from an oppressive system of capitalism in the here and now. Within this worldview, they are not stealing electricity from Eskom but liberating it from its source so that it can best serve ordinary working-class people. In order to understand the complex case study and the unfolding of the participation paradox in Thembelihle, it was necessary to conduct ethnographic research. Ethnography seeks to understand, from the people’s own perspective, what they do and the meanings that they associate with their actions. It is also important to point out that although people may engage in what appear at face value to be the same struggles, they do not necessarily understand their involvement in the same way (a point foregrounded in chapter 6) and they also remember those sets of events in different ways. The book explores pivotal historical events through the lens of multiple people’s eyes both to bring the struggle to life and to highlight the community’s diverse experiences with grassroots democracy. Furthermore, studying a group over time allows one to see that “the poor” are not a “fixed, virtuous subject,” as, Walsh has argued, the left in South Africa has mistakenly represented them but rather one that evolves over time under changing structural circumstances.110 The relationship between those studied and the researcher is arguably one of the most critical components of a research project that entails ethnographic research. It was through my own research on mainly Black working-class social movements in post-apartheid South Africa in the late 2000s that I began to develop a much fuller sense of Marxism and Paulo Freire’s work. I joined a leading new social movement at the time called the Democratic Left Front (dlf) and later a reading and activists’ group called Keep Left/Socialism from Below both of which worked directly with and were

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inspired by the okm/tcc. I observed the major 2015 occupation as it unfolded following the arrests of key activists and also was part of a team’s failed attempt to bring them food in jail. I played a minor role in campaigning for the okm in 2011 and also attempted to create further links (through my activism in the dlf) between Thembelihle’s activists with other townships and informal settlements including for example Alexandra (to the North of Johannesburg), Balfour (in Mpumalanga), and Ficksburg (in the Free State). As Choudry and Vally have observed, “The educative role of social movements and social and political activism is often overlooked within adult education and social movement scholarship.”111 They further suggest that “movements are not only significant sites of social and political action, but also … important terrains of learning and knowledge production.”112 If the case of Thembelihle teaches us that social movement histories are important sites of learning in themselves, to the extent that they produce counter-hegemonic theories and practices, then it is also their real life experiments with social change which offer lessons about how to avoid the pitfalls and perils of voice. The vast majority of activists were understandably not aware of it, but I became a dedicated apprentice of the activists of Thembelihle and Soweto from 2011 to 2014. I also engaged in informal conversations with Siphiwe Mbatha (a coordinator of the tcc) for several years as we undertook ethnographic research culminating in our co-authored book The Spirit of Marikana: The Rise of Insurgent Trade Unionism in South Africa,113 and we conducted several in-depth interviews (forty-five to ninety minutes each) together in 2018 on the tcc as the events surrounding the major occupation that year unfolded (the subject of chapter 6). Lydia Moyo and Bonginkosi Masiwa played an indispensable role in transcribing the interview material. Siphiwe had also taken detailed notes inside the meetings that took place in the lead up to the protest. This helped explain how power operates at different levels, the centrality of organization within the tcc which sheds light on its democratic approach. However, the project gained momentum after a meeting I had with Siphiwe Segodi (former chairperson, spokesperson, and secretary of the tcc) on 16 January 2019 at the Planact offices in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. I laid out the kind of work I intended to do: record a thorough history of grassroots organizing in Thembelihle since its inception. In the weeks that followed, I attended a local members’ meeting of the tcc. There was space on the agenda of their meeting for me to speak, and I explained that important scholarly works and reports had been conduct-

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ed on mass mobilization in Thembelihle, but to date there existed no extensive multi-year project or book on the subject, despite the fact that the organization – the tcc – has been able to sustain itself for nearly two decades. Many, I explained, including myself, believed that the regular disciplined executive councils, alongside the profoundly democratic character of general and mass meetings, could offer lessons not only for South African activists but also to those abroad. My understanding of local politics in the area is informed by a range of different collaborations in the community. I held one focus-group interview with Simphiwe Zwane and Siphiwe Mbatha in 2019 and a recorded phone conversation with the former in 2021 and participated in scores of informal discussions especially with Siphiwe Mbatha with regards to local politics in Thembelihle. I was the organizer or team leader for the Thembelihle group involved in the Centre for Social Change, University of Johannesburg, 2019 National Elections research project, and I have taken my post-graduate urban sociology (honours) students on site visits to the settlement on multiple occasions. Activists from Thembelihle have also been guest lecturers of my Urban Sociology module on campus at uj as well as on Zoom due to covid. The main source of data for the empirical detail explored in the next chapters amounts to a few hundred pages of transcripts of the interviews we conducted. The interviews were undertaken by Siphiwe Mbatha and Simphiwe Zwane (leading members of the tcc) as well as myself. The interviews are of an exceptionally high quality, and so few, if any, words were wasted. Twenty-nine individual activists and residents from Thembelihle partnered with us to co-construct a history of Thembelihle through taking part in the in-depth interviews. Most of these took place in 2018 and 2019, and Siphiwe Segodi was interviewed twice (in 2015 and 2019) while Simphiwe Zwane was interviewed twice as well (in 2019 and 2021) as was Nhlakanipho Lukhele. The interviewees included fifteen women and fourteen men. In part as an attempt to counteract patriarchal tendencies which silence women in the research process, my small team sought to interview as many women as possible. The findings confirm what feminist researchers and ethnographers of social movements have observed: while women are not necessarily the public face (spokesperson or chairperson) and do not always lead militant protests, they nevertheless play a vital role in sustaining activism.114 Many do participate directly in protests, but others enable social reproduction by looking after the household (especially the children) while demonstrations take place. In a similar way as Asanda Benya

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referred to the women of Marikana as “The Invisible Hands” of South Africa’s platinum mining strikes of 2012 and 2014, so too are the women of Thembelihle indispensable agents in grassroots politics.115 The sample is intentionally biased towards leading activists and those who took part in protests. This book publication is intended merely as a starting point for ongoing collaboration with activists around the history of Thembelihle. It provides unique insight into the power of ordinary people to change the world, but it also helps demonstrate the ways in which mechanisms of authority limit this power in subtle and overt ways. Meeting with various activists outside their shacks in the settlement on 11 January 2022, I promised to bring copies of the book to each participant, to hold the first launch in Thembelihle and to actively involve the community in as many public engagements around the book as possible. The activists I spoke with on that day unanimously agreed that joint presentations (between myself and the community) could inspire future generations of activists in and outside of Thembelihle.

unearthing the participation paradox: outline of chapters Chapters 3 to 6 reflect on the case study of Thembelihle as it relates to the theoretical framework and historical context of participatory governance internationally and in South Africa. When activists use direct action as a form of popular participation, especially in the form of occupation of public space, including shutting down roads, police and state repression will likely follow. The chapters demonstrate how repression seeps into the lives of the activists’ children, some of whom bear psychological scars which they will likely carry to adulthood. They investigate in detail the prevention of the right to protest as well as how the police have used rubber bullets, live ammunition, and mass arrests to deter people from mobilizing for basic services. Unpacking further the biographies of specific movement activists enables one to extend beyond the mere spectacle of protest in order to explore the coping mechanisms employed by individuals as well as the effects it has had on both their public and private lives. The next chapter (chapter 3), “The Origins of Grassroots Democracy,” homes in on the formation of the tcc in 2001 as a response to the government’s attempts at evictions. It details the political and social dynamics of the People’s Parliament, a mass meeting with the sole objective of making local decisions on behalf of the community: it is rooted directly within the lived experience of the oppressed. Those at the margins of soci-

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ety determine the rules of the game. Just as participation is an idea and practice employed by authorities to attain quiescence and conformity, so can it be activated “from below” in the service of the dispossessed. Participatory processes are never set in stone. They can take institutional forms, or “invited” forms and also non-institutional, “invented” forms. Understood in this way, authorities’ and mainstream framing of this idea can and must be turned on its head particularly as and when it amounts to the imposition of development plans from above. Indeed, the politics of participation is potentially always a contested terrain – dependent upon social relations, power dynamics, and meanings people ascribe to it. The tcc, and resistance more generally in Thembelihle, constitute an “invented” space of participation which arguably signifies the quintessential bottom-up approach to development and the need for marginalized voices to be heard. Chapter 4, “Electing Working-Class Activists,” explores local experiences with radical governance in the form of a socialist electoral front called the okm. Situating this local experiment in the context of other left-wing parties internationally, including Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, provides insight into the possibility of contentious grassroots politics to inform government policies. Chapter 5 describes a situation in which the struggle for popular participation in Thembelihle from 2015 can be characterized as a bitter-sweet victory. After more than a decade of sustained engagement with the local government, culminating in a three-week stayaway and occupation as well as a police crackdown in the area, the government was brought to its knees by the community when it announced plans to upgrade the settlement and electrify the area. This led residents to celebrate a victory, albeit momentarily, as residents’ voices were finally heard. The chapter questions the extent to which this decision is better understood as a top-down one by development saints in the form of mainstream political parties or bottom-up agency by the disenfranchised. Chapter 6, “The Struggle within the Struggle,” demonstrates that the community of Thembelihle is not homogenous and neither do socialist activists in the community represent a mass of people. Moreover, it suggests the movement for service delivery in Thembelihle has been relatively independent and relatively constant over time. When the government broke its promise or delayed in bringing local development to the community, the tcc continued to mobilize. This section offers a detailed ethnographic history of the radical popular conception of participation which underpinned the attempts to improve the area between 2016 and 2019. It highlights the challenges and set-backs that activists face as well as

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the prospects for building socialist participatory centres outside the relatively narrow confines of Thembelihle. The conclusion suggests that the People’s Parliament’s vision must be rooted within a restructuring of the state and the political economy: one which lays a direct challenge to neoliberal capitalism. No budget that relies upon cost recovery, the poor paying for basic services and housing that they cannot afford, or the adoption of piecemeal state welfare projects will do. This process cannot be confined to one settlement, township, school, or factory: it must be widespread and seep into the lives of the poor and working-class majority and indeed seek to transform the relations of wealth in the country. The scholarly works on a global scale, in South Africa and in Thembelihle in particular, seek to magnify the voices of the poor, albeit in a supposed vacuum, thus taking the ideological vantage point of neoliberal capitalism for granted. By not naming the enemy, these works risk liberalizing or decapitating participation, and thereby reinforcing structural oppression. The marriage between neoliberalism and participation of the disenfranchised is unrealistic and destined to fail. Whether through the theory and practice of participatory development or epg, meaningful participation is not possible under neoliberalism. Of central importance are participatory spaces that emerge and, to an extent, operate outside of the logic and dictates of the market. The case study of Thembelihle documents the politics not only of the masses, “the people,” or the dispossessed as a whole but also zeros in on what is arguably the most important feature that must ground our hope in a counter-hegemonic alternative to mainstream popular participation: relatively small (yet committed and organized) groups of socialists seeking to liberate people including themselves from oppressive systems of power. In light of this, we now turn to the history of the activists behind the origins of grassroots democracy (an “invented space”) in Thembelihle. This sets the stage for understanding the ways in which even their multifaceted, carefully orchestrated and sustained forms of organization are not immune to the participation paradox.

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3 The People’s Parliament and the Origins of Grassroots Democracy

The struggle over the future of Thembelihle is best understood as a homegrown attempt to participate in decision making and local governance processes: it is an example of radical participatory governance which requires not only institutional means through which to enact change, but also non-institutional mechanisms or contentious politics. The People’s Parliament is a term used by residents themselves to describe a process of genuine citizen control or direct democracy, but it also occurs in the form of a mass meeting that takes democratic decisions: it requires taking control over the destiny of one’s own community. A democratic social arena that genuinely represents a relatively large group of the dispossessed may therefore be called the People’s Parliament. They are mostly well-attended and take on a militant character during times of crisis. Its “social space,”1 discursive rules, and boundaries are directly constituted and defined by ordinary people at the margins of society with aspirations and dreams of improving their own lives. At times it is literally a matter of life or death. For the residents of Thembelihle, participation is often about extending beyond the bare minimum needed for survival in a corrugated iron shack, but as we shall see in the chapters which follow this one, it also means engaging in broader struggles, campaigning for workers’ rights and confronting xenophobia and violence. State repression haunts the everyday activities of the People’s Parliament because of the way in which it exercises power through direct action such as road occupations, informal electricity connections, and the disruption of “business as usual.” Andrea Cornwall, one of the foremost radical scholars of participatory development, employs the concept of “space” to understand the dynamics and transformative potential of participatory processes.2 Applying this framework suggests that scholars need to focus on the social and political

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context in which the idea and practice of participation emerges. For example, do they emerge in government, elite or development agency boardrooms, or out of the experiences of the dispossessed? Participatory spaces are social arenas in which the community has the potential to have an impact on policies, discourses, and practices of development. Rather than describe a geographical space that is considered to be an empty area, this concept refers to “a dynamic, humanely constructed means of control and hence of domination, of power.”3 Cornwall suggests that analysing spaces is a useful way to understand how they might be employed by people to enhance citizen participation for some or to undermine the same for others: “Talking in terms of spaces for participation conveys the situated nature of participation, the bounded yet permeable arenas in which participation is invited, and the domains from within which new intermediary institutions and new opportunities for citizen involvement have been fashioned. It also allows us to think about the ways in which particular sites come to be populated, appropriated or designated by particular actors for particular kinds of purposes.”4 While these spaces can take many forms and overlap with each other, I extend a discussion below of two forms: institutional and non-institutional. Institutional spaces have been, in the main, defined and formed by the government while non-institutional examples are sporadic and arise out of people’s own experiences of exclusion. Cornwall differentiates between what she calls popular spaces (or invented spaces) and invited spaces. Popular or invented spaces are “those arenas in which people join together, often with others like them, in collective actions, self-help initiatives, or everyday sociality.”5 Invited forms, on the other hand: bring together, almost by definition, a very heterogeneous set of actors among whom there might be expected to be significant differences in status. While the nature of public representation within these institutions varies enormously, “invited spaces” assemble people who might relate very differently if they met in other settings, who may be seen (even if they don’t see themselves) as representing particular interests, and who generally have rather different stakes in, accountabilities for and responsibilities following from any given outcome.6 According to Cornwall, “The primary emphasis of institutions like the World Bank seems to be on relocating the poor within the prevailing order: bringing them in, finding them a place, lending them opportunities, inviting them to participate.”7 In the South African context, the main examples

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of invited spaces are ward committees or development forums, more often than not ineffective or undemocratic, while popular ones may consist of protest and resistance and therefore involve confrontation with those in government. The latter are used when institutional arenas have been nonexistent or closed to those who are dissatisfied with government projects or policies and have been defined by people from below. The conceptualization of popular agency underpinned by the mass meeting called the People’s Parliament in Thembelihle, including the ways in which it has consistently claimed rights from the state on the terms of those who have historically been victims, provides lessons regarding the limits and potentialities for participation to transform development. A quintessential and promising “invented” or popular space, the residents created their own form of participation in 2001 with the launch of what would become an explicitly anti-capitalist organization, the Thembelihle Crisis Committee (tcc). They resisted evictions the following year despite the anc being bent on a policy that dictated that residents should leave the area; they used the “people’s connection” from the late 2000s to access free electricity from the surrounding areas; and, in 2011 and 2015, they embarked on unprecedented mass protests, in particular road occupations, until the state put the question of free basic services in Thembelihle back on the table. The crisis committee’s theory and practice of power alongside the People’s Parliament provides “alternative ways of conceptualizing the ways in which popular agency is legitimately conferred to higher level agents.”8 In 2021, the tcc consisted of forty-seven formal members who pay subscription fees each year of R20. However, its support is perhaps more accurately measured through its regular mass meetings which consist of 200 to 300. The community in this case is mobilized through loud-hailing and word of mouth when the community has an issue to discuss that the general meeting cannot take on its own. It is notable that residents’ attendance in these meetings may soar to 1,000–2,000 during times of crisis. It is argued that by paying careful attention to the politics as well as the social and historical context of the tcc’s application of power from below (in the form of direct action, including road occupations), scholars and indeed practitioners can gain a greater appreciation for alternative ways of thinking about participation, that is, through the lens of an exceptional and radical community-based mass meeting which residents in Thembelihle call the People’s Parliament. But the paradox of participation (as we shall see in the chapters which follow) means that the broader structures of society, which limit what is possible locally, must be central to our

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analysis even if grassroots militants at the forefront of these processes assert an anti-capitalist agenda. What appears on the surface as a form of radical emancipation by the poor may contribute – perhaps even unintentionally, as the case of Thembelihle cogently demonstrates – to the reassertion of power by those authorities who help reinforce the very conditions of oppression that grassroots militants struggle against. As much as participation appears to be or may be presented as a weapon in the arsenal of the dispossessed, it is also a method by which the ruling class maintains the status quo.

the origins of grassroots democracy That activity by the state, City of Johannesburg [to forcibly remove the residents of Thembelihle from their homes] … provoked even the most polite member of the community to say, “I have to do something about this, otherwise I am in trouble.” So … [in such a context] it was easy to mobilize people.9 The local municipality overseeing development in the area of Johannesburg conducted geological tests in the 1990s, finding that Thembelihle was not safe for human settlement, and by 2002 the administration decided to remove the people of Thembelihle. Booklets describing the nature of this removal were nailed on poles outside resident’s shacks and the anc local government councillor, Dan Bovu, held a mass meeting to field questions and offer necessary details about the removal. Despite these consultations, mainly in the form of information dissemination, the vast majority of residents were caught off guard and were relatively unaware of what was about to transpire. The notorious security company called the Red Ants had, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, been hired by the government to carry out evictions mainly in Black working-class areas, including but not limited to informal settlements in Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town. According to the Red Ants website they “have assisted many clients to execute evictions notices lawfully granted by the courts to remove unlawfully occupied residents.”10 They partner with the South African police to carry out evictions and stamp out “illegal” electricity connections and have, in their own words, “gathered a reputation of being tough whilst remaining professional and sensitive to the matter at hand.”11 When the human-stinging Red Ants came to Thembelihle on D-Day, 22 June 2002, a small minority, perhaps dozens of activists, had prepared and were ready to resist. Others learned about the evictions and joined the protestors when

Thembelihle Crisis Committee

In the early 1990s, the PanAfrican Congress (pac – viewed as a left alternative to the anc) recruits youth in Thembelihle.

In 1983, residents begin to make Nelson Mandela visits Thembe homes in Thembelihle, with lihle promising to upgrade the many obtaining work at a local settlement brick factory.

anc formally adopts neoliberal policy called gear in 1996.

Key events in Thembelihle

Operation Khanyisa Movement (okm) formed by apf affiliates (including the tcc). They collectively win only one seat in the 2006 City of Johannesburg local government elections.

2006–07

The tcc is formed and plays a tcc puts forth an okm central role in resisting the councillor in the 2006 local forced removals. The organizagovernment elections. tion links to the secc in Soweto.

Dan Bovu is elected as the ward A segment of residents of Them8 anc councillor. An armed belihle are moved to Lehae, but security company attempts to the vast majority refuse to go. evict residents, but thousands stop them.

South Africa’s new social movements emerge including the Anti-Privatisation Forum (apf), Anti-Eviction Campaign (aec), and Landless People’s Movement (lpm).

The anc wins first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994. Nelson Mandela is elected president.

Following a period of “ungovernability,” the Nationalist Party unbans the anc and other Black liberation parties in 1990.

2000–02

1994–96

National or regional

Mid-1980s to early 1990s

Brief three-part history of the Thembelihle Crisis Committee (tcc) in relation to key events in the community as well as regionally and nationally.

Table 3.1 Timeline of Thembelihe 1983–2007

Xenophobic attacks against African foreign nationals take place across the country.

Technical dolomitic reports undertaken by the City of Johannesburg mandate that Thembelihleans must be evicted.

The tcc holds meetings condemning the violence which prevents local attacks.

National or regional context

Key events in Thembelihle

Thembelihle Crisis Committee

2008

Table 3.2 Timeline of Thembelihle 2008–14

Thembelihleans begin connecting themselves.

Residents of Thembelihle meet with Protea South comrades and members of the secc who have used the People’s Connection to link to the electricity grids.

South Africa hosts the World Cup.

2010

The tcc plays a leading role in offering support for mineworkers and in the newly formed United Front (which brings together workers and communities).

On 16 August 2012, thirty-four mineworkers are gunned down by the police in Marikana. This sets the stage for the “numsa moment.” The eff political party is launched in Marikana in 2013.

The tcc and secc (the only affiliates remaining of the okm) win one seat in the City of Johannesburg.

After many marches to various authorities (for housing and electricity), residents lead a weeklong occupation of the surrounding roads.

2012–14

2011

Many activists in the tcc are not fooled by the concession made by the anc, seeing the intervention as “electrickery.”

Thembelihle Committee members are targeted Crisis by the police. Committee

Leading activists in The tcc continues to hold regular the tcc mobilize executive, members and mass meetings. to counter theft of foreign owned shops which accomThe state awards tcc the “Mkhaya panies the 2018 Migrants Award: Most Integrated protest. Community” in South Africa.

Marches are held in response and in early 2018 a further occupation is held In the 2021 local government elections, neiby residents. ther the okm nor the srwp stand candidates.

*Tables 3.1–3.3 build upon Nicolette Pingo’s “Institutionalisation of a Social Movement: The Case of Thembelihle, the Thembelihle Crisis Committee and the Operation Khanyisa Movement and the use of the Brick, the Ballot and the Voice” (ma diss., University of Witwatersrand, 2013), 116–18.

On 24 April 2015, the Gauteng Provincial government agrees to “formalize” Thembelihle.

Members of the tcc campaign for the srwp but fail to achieve the success it attained locally with the okm in previous elections.

Residents create a petition for the removal of the coj Ward 8 councillor.

Government’s broken promises regarding development continue.

Then president of the anc Jacob Zuma visits Thembelihle praising residents for raising their voices, despite criminalising activists for fifteen years. Electricity poles costing r323 million for 7,000 homes are put up under the auspices of the anc.

2019–present

Key A three-week long occupation events in (over electricity and land) led by resThembelihle idents takes place from February– March 2015 leading to the arrest of more than seventy activists.

2017–18

The Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party (formed on the back of the numsa moment) stands in the 2019 national elections but receives only 25,000 votes nationally. The anc’s support declines, but it still wins the election with a majority of about 57 per cent.

In response to militant protests across the country, the City of Johannesburg recommits to building a synergistic relationship with marginalized areas.

2016

Local government elections take place. Support for the okm (in the City of Johannesburg) shrinks by half in the context of declining anc hegemony and steady growth of the eff. anc lost grip on the metros.

National or regional

2015

Table 3.3 Timeline of Thembelihle 2015–present

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the Red Ants were passing their homes armed with crow bars. As shacks were being ripped apart and packed up on vehicles, a vast crowd of 4,000 people flooded to the borders of the settlement, lining the length of the street. They were told by leaders of the defensive formation called tcc (or, in short, Crisis), “Vuka amadoda!” [“No man [sic] will sleep tonight!” – literally, “Wake up men!”]. The local government councillor was chased out of the settlement and the community’s decision to remain on the land that they occupied had become, in a word, hegemonic. The Red Ants show of force, followed by police reinforcements, did not have the effect that state officials had hoped for. Instead it backfired, catapulting thousands of residents to action, and it also created a fertile ground for activists to come together for a common goal. What could be more just than standing up for the rights of your family and your neighbours who were facing the real prospects of having their shacks ripped down? If an activist was relatively calm at home, at work, or in the streets, he or she had now found a worthy cause: one that could protect an entire community. But activists went far beyond this in the two decades which followed: not only would they resist the top-down imposition of urban planning processes, amounting to forced removals, but a significant minority would undertake an offensive war against capitalism and for the upliftment of their own and other working-class communities. For scores of activists throughout the period between 2002 and 2020, this would involve dethroning the systemic enemy called capitalism. The chapters which follow demonstrate the everyday lived experiences of activists involved in direct action and the ways in which they, as both individuals and collectives, shape and are shaped by the sustained and ongoing process of contentious politics in their own community. They do not only go out to marches in nearby cities when it benefits them or when they think they should support a particular kind of action, but they live politics in their homes and at their doorsteps. For more than twenty years, contentious politics in the community-based struggles in Thembelihle have shaped each individuals’ politics as they occupy their minds and even enter activists’ bedrooms when, for example, the police sometimes come knocking when they are asleep. A Marxist perspective on participatory governance suggests that, like freedom, it is never bestowed but is instead fought for in regular and disciplined meetings. As we shall see, it is perhaps experienced to a far greater degree outside of the meeting and far beyond the public’s view. In order to understand this, one needs to move beyond the headlines and public spectacles of protests by unpacking the biographies of ordinary people who fuel, enact, and to a certain extent direct the People’s Parlia-

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ment. While on the one hand the origins of participatory arenas are critical, equally important is their political development which (since they are always contested) inevitably changes over time. It matters who intervenes in grassroots struggles for participatory governance. Those who had historically been members of the Pan African Congress (pac) in particular were inclined towards extending a movement for justice beyond the confines of Thembelihle, and their tendencies were soon to be amplified by the arrival of activists from the other new social movements in postapartheid South Africa (as highlighted in chapter 4). This chapter brings to light the formation of the tcc, a democratic grassroots organization that was founded in 2001 as a response to the government’s attempts at evictions. A social and political domain took root within Thembelihle as residents occupied the area from the late 1980s, built shacks and developed a profound sense of human rights and entitlements, which have contributed to their ability to sustain direct pressure on the state for over two decades. This chapter also introduces several activists in Thembelihle. Their biographies, who they are and where they come from, are important since they are among the most conscientized sections of a militant community and because their stories are amongst those which have been central throughout most of the twenty years of community struggle that this book documents.

the formation of a crisis committee This section focuses on a generation of activists in Thembelihle who had hope in the aftermath of the events surrounding the almost god-like proportions of South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994. The state was widely expected to deliver much needed goods and services, including housing, water, and electricity to the Black majority. This specific section of the Indian township Lenasia, in which the Black informal settlement was situated, was to become a beacon for transformation and integration under the new dispensation. Nelson Mandela himself had come to Thembelihle in 1994, promising to upgrade the settlement, thereby instilling a deep sense of hope amongst many residents who believed that their dusty streets with no pavements would become a thing of the past.12 The promise of “a better life for all” in the rainbow nation became engrained in the minds of the residents of Thembelihle as well as in many other townships and informal settlements. In response to neoliberal policies implemented by the anc from the mid to late 1990s, leading to forced removals and water and electricity cut-offs, democratic and participatory organizational forms called civics

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re-emerged. Understanding participatory governance through the lens of militant organizations in South Africa, and in the Global South more generally, requires one to carefully explore who the activists are who constitute these struggles to participate, where they come from, and the social and historical context in which they make strategic, tactical, and other decisions. A significant number of the historical leaders of the tcc came from the pac, which was viewed as a left or radical alternative to the ruling anc. The pac attracted young militants who believed in the need for the Black majority to govern themselves and take control over economic resources, in particular land, that rightfully belonged to them. The struggle against evictions from the land that they and their parents had occupied intertwined with their ideological vantage points. Siphiwe Segodi (hereafter referred to as Segodi) was perhaps the quintessential forerunner of the tcc as it exists today. I shall recount in detail his biography as well as the development of his political orientation. We will also introduce his relationship to another core activist, Mzwandile Mdingi, who was at the forefront of the tcc in its embryonic stage when it was primarily geared towards organizing grassroots resistance against the forced removals. Segodi was born on 23 October 1974 in Orlando East, Soweto. When he was about five years old, his mother, a single parent, bought material in order to build her own backyard shack for them to stay in in another area in Soweto, a practice which was beginning to become popular in Orlando. When he was old enough to start school, he moved in with his uncle in Moletsane, in deep Soweto. In 1987, he moved back to his mother’s place before, in 1990, they went to live together in Thembelihle.13 In the early 1990s, Segodi was recruited to the student wing of the pac, the Pan African Student Organisation, which he regarded as being more radical than the anc. He took some time off from school and was politically inactive throughout most of the mid-1990s until he was recruited to the youth wing of the pac, the Azanian Youth Unity, by an influential leader named Donald Roro. At the beginning of 2001, Segodi was elected to its branch executive committee as the secretary but soon came to realize, no doubt with others, that mobilization through the structures of a particular political party had certain limitations, given the dominance of the anc as well as divisions between parties in the community. As a result, a group within the pac, which included Segodi, believed it necessary to have a non-party-aligned formation in the community, which they called the African Concerned Masses:

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We managed to moblise the community. I remember the marches we had, directing grievances to the mayor, etc. And it was in one of the marches when we [were] coming from delivering the memorandum to [the] municipality. The municipality is not far from Thembelihle … we decided to march to the community hall which was run by the [anc] councillor. Basically the anc ran the place. On our way back from the municipality we thought well let us just march to the community hall. It was supposed to end at park station [the central meeting point for mass meetings], but we decided let it end at [the] community hall to show force that we are moblising. On our arrival there, the councillor and [and his] friends pulled their guns at our group.14 The organizers opened a case against the shooters and the police became involved in what was now a legal matter. Statements were taken. Donald and other leaders of the local pac branch made a decision to withdraw the case despite the statements and position of the people who had been marching. Segodi recalled that this “made me lose faith in the leadership of the Concerned African Masses and the pac and I think [as a result] I withdrew.”15 From his perspective, the pac was bowing to the power and influence of the anc, despite the fact that the latter were in the wrong. Later in 2001, Segodi would be recruited by Baba Mzwandile (Baba means father in isiZulu and is often used as a respectful honorific), who had recently founded a group of activists that he called “Crisis” and which some also knew as the Thembelihle Crisis Committee. Mzwandile was inspired by the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (secc), which was, at the time, gaining public recognition as a forerunner in reconnecting the electricity of residents, in particular pensioners, in the nearby township. In response to the neoliberal cost recovery schemes adopted by the anc, the secc had developed an alternative socialist organization, with roots in various sections of Soweto that were experiencing cut-offs of electricity or water. Segodi remembered that “His [Mzwandile”s] motivation for beginning this organization was that the Soweto Electricity Crisis [Committee] might be the solution to Thembelihle’s electricity [problem] … And then I became organizer.”16 Mzwandile had designated himself as the chairperson and recruited activists within the community to lead certain tasks and fulfil particular roles. According to Trevor Ngwane’s PhD thesis, which dedicates a full chapter to understanding the history of the committees in Thembelihle, the activist was a “forceful leader,” had a “strong man” style

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of leadership, and was “a man of action.”17 One resident remembered that in the early 2000s, “Mzwandile was king in Thembelihle” and painted an image of how he organized direct action in the form of mass mobilization of the community: Ahhh no, Mdingi had a strong gang, his own gang. There was no gathering, you would hear a loud bang on your roof and someone shouting, “Get out!” You would hear a man saying, “I’m still getting dressed.” The response would be: “You are only getting dressed now?” You got dressed on the way there and you wouldn’t even have a weapon to protect yourself with but you will get it when you get there [to the streets].18 He further elaborated that Mzwandile had little formal education: “[he] only understood what is being said, but when it came to words on paper, he would want you to read it for him.”19 Segodi remembered that the comrade had a top-down or authoritarian way of running the tcc which brought him into conflict with others who had desired a more democratic way of doing things: “He would [personally] fire people. So if he recruits you today and somewhere down the line you don’t get along, he will replace you and get someone else and get the organization going [again]. So I think with recruiting me unfortunately, I had to challenge the style [regarding how] he was doing things and I think I was constantly seen as a threat [to him] later on.”20 These issues, however, were put aside for the time being since there was now an imminent threat of state intervention in the form of forced removals.

forced evictions meet the people’s parliament Mass meetings in Thembelihle, with hundreds attending, occur regularly when there is an issue to discuss with the community. During times of crisis up to 1,000 or 2,000 could attend as occurred prior to the forced evictions and before the tcc’s existence. These meetings are arguably the defining feature of popular resistance and even local politics in the area. As Ngwane, a staunch community activist in the Gauteng region, personally witnessed on more than one occasion and documented in his own PhD thesis, decisions in the settlement could be made during the meeting and then acted upon directly following it.21 As the scholar-activist aptly demonstrated, “The voice of the people, of the community, umphakathi [the com-

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munity], was sacrosanct and … it was expressed in the community ‘mass meeting.’”22 During the peak of grassroots mobilization in Thembelihle, mass meetings took place on a daily basis. These are “a form of direct democracy” enacted or collectively performed outside the framework of a liberal or bourgeois system of governance.23 An alternative arena defined by the interests of the dispossessed, it is a means by which the people literally govern themselves. As such, the mass meeting, an emblematic form of radical participatory governance, was later renamed and is, at the time of writing, called the People’s Parliament by Thembelihleans. Born in Soweto, in 1951, Jane (a pseudonym) is amongst those who had been involved in the People’s Parliament since she moved to Thembelihle as a single mother in 1990 with her children. She spent much time as a domestic worker, cleaned and cooked for a restaurant nearby, and held similar employment in a fish and chips business, and tended to an old age home for a stint. For an extensive period throughout the 2000s, she recalled that she would be engaged in household duties, “social reproduction,” but when the community took the position to stand up for what was rightfully theirs, “protests were my number one priority.”24 It seemed to be assumed that when militant demonstrations occur, women are required to stay home. It is important to point out that without women taking part in social reproduction the people of Thembelihle would not be able to protest. The implications of this nevertheless reflect the status quo: women are to an extent relegated to the private sphere, while men conduct business in the public. The choice to join collective action to disrupt everyday activities was never taken lightly but only after it had become clear that the local authorities were unresponsive to the concerns of the community: The reason behind our protests is [that] when we have demands [and] when we could not get a straight answer or [we are] not getting the answer at all [and authorities are] taking us from one place to the other. Even if we could send them countless messages but with no response. We could send in memorandums, try to sit down and negotiate with them but without [us getting] any answers. They will be playing hide and seek. People will end up being annoyed about that and will opt for protesting.25 “At the end,” she deduced based upon her experience, “they will listen to us.” A seasoned elder, who had been staying in a shack in Thembelihle for nearly three decades when she was interviewed, Jane echoed Ngwane’s

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own interpretation of the meaning and political orientation of the People’s Parliament when she explained that the central point at which decisions on behalf of the community are taken is in the mass meeting: “We hold our meetings in the [People’s] Parliament … if you have never been to the parliament you are not a serious person.” She elaborated that, as a resident of Thembelihle, “You have to attend the parliament … The parliament is the one which rules and has the final say.” Questions may be dealt with by raising your hand and leaders of political and other groups are allowed to speak just as any other resident. She brought the point home when she concluded that the “good thing about the Parliament [is that] it is not about you as an individual … but the masses [rather] take decisions.”26 But it was a relatively small group of young men, alongside Mzwandile’s tcc, that prepared “to confront the enemy” on 22 June 2002 when the Red Ants came to evict people from their shelters.27 Over the next several days and in the ensuing weeks, mass meetings would regularly be held, leading 4,000 residents to take to the streets. Indeed, the vast majority of residents could not yet fathom how the new democratic government could take such drastic steps. One man, Sibusiso Trevor Nhlatseng (hereafter referred to as Sibusiso), was not involved in politics at the time. In fact, his description of the events suggests that he was unaware, until the last moment, that a decision had been made to move them: “As we were sitting, we saw this truck coming in full of people and then more trucks followed. That is when we realized these are Red Ants. They had their crow bars, hammers, and their leaders said, ‘these are the houses’ address[es], make sure you load them in the truck.’”28 The residents were instructed to “come with us, let us go [together],” but those standing outside their shacks would not do so. The leaders of the delegation of Red Ants proceeded despite the lack of consensus. Physical conflict began as residents fought back. Soon, Sibusiso and others realized that their very own anc councillor, Dan Bovu, had given the go-ahead. They had witnessed their own democratically elected local government official utterly failing to represent them. From this man’s perspective, he was part of a plan to have the people of Thembelihle removed without their consent: it was a top-down decision that did not reflect the needs and aspirations of the community.29 The residents of Thembelihle were united in their stand. While the vast majority of the community had become spontaneously involved, Segodi and a handful of others had organized through the structures of the tcc in anticipation of the impending forced removals:

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Basically tcc mobilized the community. They were the ones that said, “come out, defend us, the Red Ants are trying to remove us from the place.” But also the youth leaders, we tried to organize people to go to points where the Red Ants would try to dismantle and [we] physically confronted them. And I know the older members of the community were threatened to say, “This is our land, we are living here in Thembelihle.” So I think that activity by the state, City of Johannesburg, in a way provoked even the most polite member of the community, to say, “I have to do something about this, otherwise I am in trouble.” So I would say [in such a context] it was easy to mobilise people.30 The evictions came to a halt that evening. The police arrived the next morning to back up the Red Ants. They appeared not to be interested in negotiations and shot rubber bullets into the crowd. According to one resident, “It was terrifying. We were all standing in front of the police, and next minute they started firing. We were running everywhere. I saw people fall to the ground. It is very bad.”31 The news report on the day of the skirmish painted a bleak picture of the police brutality: a fifteen-year-old girl was bleeding profusely from her eye after being shot with a rubber bullet. A young man keeled over after having been shot in the stomach.32 In a legal case between the City of Johannesburg and the occupiers of Thembelihle Informal Settlement, residents claimed that they were told by municipal officials that, if they did not voluntarily move to nearby Vlakfontein, their homes would be destroyed.33 Notably, the pac’s national secretary general, Thami ka Plaatje, also intervened directly in Thembelihle following the attempted evictions, noting: “The people [of Thembelihle] are not prepared to move … They have been told to move to an underdeveloped site where they have only built toilets.”34 The city, however, continued to maintain that the relocations were not “forced.” The director of the City of Johannesburg Region 11, Sibongile Mazibuku, who was overseeing the so-called development, put across the party line, “It is not forced removals … I’m not sure what all this is about – everything has been voluntary so far.”35 Thembelihleans nevertheless remained steadfast in their commitment to avoid having their homes taken from them. Over the next several days, seas of people flooded the streets as an estimated 4,000 residents, an average of about one person per stand or yard, came out of their homes and into the streets to prevent the evictions during the night. The residents continued to mobilize in order to maintain their ground, thereby holding onto their power and sustained unity in numbers, believing that the Red

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Ants could strike at any moment. “Actually, I have never seen so many people … I did not expect to see so many people … There was a lot of people, I mean you could not even see the people at the back [of the demonstration],” Segodi recalled. A message was sent out within the community: “Vuka amadoda!” [wake up men!].36 The anc councillor, Bovu, had given his consent for an action that was explicitly against the wishes of the vast majority of people in the community. It was decided that his offices should be closed: We went to where the councillor and friends seem to hang around. We went there and shut the place down. We wanted to see the councillor [go] down, we shut the place down, took the keys. Of course there was property. We were running away from [or seeking to avoid] the issue of theft, because they wanted to nail us down with the slightest mistake. We debated on whether we should take the keys. We gave them to the police station commander because the commissioner of the police was there. We took the keys and gave them to the police station commander and said, “it is a no-go zone for the councillor.” So from that day the councillor took a very long time setting foot in Thembelihle.37 The grassroots resistance led to a situation in which Bovu was effectively “banish[ed] … from the settlement.”38 Ngwane saw with his own eyes a mass meeting taking place in Thembelihle at Park Station in late June 2002 in which the community made a decision to close the offices. According to Ngwane, “His offices at sa Block community centre were ransacked and his assistants chased away by thousands of residents in a scene that conjures up the phrase ‘festival of the oppressed.’”39 The hegemony of the local anc structures was, albeit momentarily, crumbling and in crisis. The approach of forced evictions was considered illegitimate by the vast majority of the community. It was a quintessential failed top-down attempt. A bottom-up approach was needed that could, in the near future, represent the community in times of crisis. But would it be enough to do so locally, or would possibilities develop for extending a longer-term approach to addressing the underlying systems of oppression which Black South Africans continued to face? In the lead up to the evictions and in their aftermath, the tcc was in the process of transforming its own organizational structures to become more democratic and also to relate more directly to the needs and aspirations of the residents more generally.

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democratising the tcc A young man named Phetogo Simon Gopane (nicknamed Ghetto), alongside comrade Segodi and a group of elders, sought to create an explicitly democratic culture within the tcc. They modelled its organizational form and politics beyond the tactic of merely direct action, which was Mzwandile’s main emphasis. With their birthdays about a month apart, they were both in their late twenties at the time that the tcc was “relaunched.” The crucial role of new social movements in this process, in particular the secc, is dealt with in the following chapter, but first let us deal with the role of Thembelihleans. Ghetto was born on 22 September 1974 in a small town called Taung, in Northwest province, where he completed his matric (high school diploma). In the early 1990s, the young man became part of the anc Youth League and he recruited people to join the anc: “After Mandela came out from jail the young people in South Africa were very excited that the leader that they waited for is back and [we] were told that the things would change.” Ghetto recalls campaigning relentlessly for the party in the lead-up to the 1994 elections: I was a party agent in the anc. I remember I was wearing a Mandela T-shirt because iec [Independent Electoral Commission] has no restrictions against [representing] the parties. The parties could just wear what they like … I was a party agent who worked more than others, I remember I worked [nearly] 24 hours [a day]. I woke up at about 3 o’clock [in the morning] and slept [late in the evening].40 Twenty-five years later, when he was interviewed for this book, this man had aged and regretted that their lives had not improved since then: “We were very excited to vote because it was our first time to do so and we were hoping for a better life but unfortunately up to this far no better life has one got from this [dispensation].” In 1998 he moved to the East Rand (the eastern arm of a conurbation centred on Johannesburg), to a township called Katlehong, where his uncle stayed. Ghetto was searching for a job and he quickly found one as a petrol attendant, but it wasn’t long before he was out of work again and that same year he began to stay with another uncle who lived in Thembelihle. His expectations were quite modest: “The better life I was looking for is nothing else but getting a job and work so that I could at least manage to maintain my children and my parents because by then I had one

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kid so I had to take care of my daughter.”41 By 1999 he became a member and attended meetings of the pac, the same that Segodi served in. He was recruited to the pac by a neighbour who lived across the street. In October 2002, the tcc was reformulated as a more democratic grassroots organization. Ghetto remembers, “The elders around Thembelihle came together and I was invited in that particular meeting. It was only me and Siphwe [Segodi] who were very young and we were with old people. That is where the tcc formation happened.” In his view, “We reformed and relaunched tcc” at this juncture because of the exclusive and undemocratic nature of the former Crisis organization that was led by Mzwandile. The politics within the dynamic space of the tcc were fundamentally different than those he had previously experienced in mainstream political organizations: What impressed me from day one of the meeting was the politics that were put on the table on that particular day because people were talking about their own things and needs, you know, surroundings. I entertained it because as someone surrounded by that village [Taung, where I grew up], it was my first time in that particular year [1998] to see a cluster of shacks like the one you can see. Because at the village where I come from the shelter is different. You know they will use bricks and whatever but here it was another scenario altogether, maybe that was what made me to entertain everything and tell myself that I have to be part of this [movement].42 Ghetto was nominated at one of the first democratic sittings of the

tcc to serve as its secretary – in his words, “to hold their books” – while Segodi served as its chairperson. In these respective positions, they would lead the tcc for the greater part of the upcoming decade and beyond. The tcc’s leadership, in its early stages, did not involve only men. Over the years it has had many women members in leadership positions, but few have been more consistently engaged with the community and beyond than Simphiwe Zwane (called Zwane in the rest of this book). Currently a mother of three, she became a relentless and seemingly fearless fighter for the working class and oppressed. Born in Zola, Soweto, on 21 September 1978, her own mother, Margaret Zwane, proudly stated that she “is too strong, she should have been born a man, and she is strong like a man.”43

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3.1 Grassroots organizer walks the street. Simphiwe Zwane walks through a street that has recently been the site of a protest. An okm councilor and organizer in Thembelihle, she has been consistently involved and deeply embedded in local politics and also in the community’s attempts at reaching out to the broader working class.

After being raised by her grandmother in rural KwaNdebele, then a Bantustan, she moved with her mother to Naledi, Soweto, at the age of five and then to a stand in Thembelihle in December 1990, the same year that Mandela was released from prison. Simphiwe was part of the first generation of activists in the tcc. Her politics did not emerge from out of nowhere; like many others in the area she was schooled within local pac structures: Around 2001 I was a member of the pac and what attracted me to the struggle is that they were fighting for development within Thembelihle. But due to divisions and so forth in the political party I lost interest … and in 2002 [around the time the government attempted to evict] I joined the tcc. By then I was starting to be matured, growing up seeing the needs of my community and myself – how we used to

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starve. And another thing is the way shacks used to burn because we didn’t have electricity. People used to die due from coal tin heaters and I felt that this is not the life and maybe if I join the struggle there are things that I can change or there is a change that I can bring in our community together with other people.44 According to Nicolette Pingo, whose research focuses specifically on Zwane, the activist spent most of the 2000s as one of the most active members of the tcc, but it was only a decade later that she held a formal leadership position within the executive of the organization. While the tcc has a formal aim in its constitution to “eradicate gender inequality” (see chapter 4) the civic itself is not free from contradictions in this regard and to a certain extent its leadership reflects patriarchal tendencies. While the tcc executive is often constituted on a year’s basis by two or three (less than half) women, Zwane argues that the People’s Parliament is fueled mainly by the voices of women: When we are at People’s Parliament, everyone, he or she, is free to speak and we don’t undermine which voice whether it is coming from a female, whether it is coming from a male as long as you stated your statement and it comes with reason … We don’t look at the gender. The important thing is the view. That we need to find out if they do agree on certain things or what. What do they think of the situation? Most of the time the people who are coming forward to speak and they are given a platform are women, rather than men.45 This has implications for existing struggles over service delivery, particular electricity because, in her view, “women are the household” and are therefore disproportionately affected: When they [children] are hungry they won’t go to tell their fathers … they will always come to their mom and say, “mom, we are hungry.” In most cases, when the sun rises, the mother or women will have to think how things are going to be today. What are we going to do? What are my kids going to eat or my family is going to eat? Like let’s say there is no electricity, then women must figure it out. I will be going like maybe to the forest to pick up wood and some stuff so that I can come back home and make fire and cook the food.46

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Perhaps what fuels Zwane is selflessness alongside a strong sense that people do not become genuine activists in order to gain recognition. Pingo further identified three seminal factors that influenced the young woman’s activism in her early adulthood.47 The first is that, while she was undertaking her matric, she sensed that students evaluated people mainly on the basis of class or social status: that is, through the lens of whether or not people lived in formal housing or informal – that is, shacks. She came to realize that a student would rather socialize with someone living in a formal house than be ridiculed for spending time with someone who tends to be associated with poverty. The second was the fact that her mother told her she was spending too much of her day on politics rather than formal education. Zwane’s response was that her own family’s living conditions, and the fact that these are socially constructed, necessitate her involvement in political education and mass mobilization. Third and finally, she was influenced by a wide range of activists including her own father, but none were more important than Segodi. It is no coincidence that both were involved in the local pac branch before becoming integral components of the tcc. Furthermore, the two would become partners and raise children together. According to Pingo, Zwane’s character is “strong, independent, courageous but often soft spoken and [she is] happy to either participate [in decisions taken] or take [the] lead when necessary.”48 The experience of the Red Ants and the accompanying police response catapulted the tcc into action and attracted a range of activists, some of whom remain in the organization at the time of writing. The tcc transformed its own identity to begin to consolidate itself as a mass-based democratic movement with a socialist leaning (this latter point will be dealt with in great detail in the following chapter). Two neighbours, who would become leading political activists in the tcc at different times following the attempted evictions, are the subject of the next section.

“it was my first time i had a place to call home” Between two family’s shacks lay a narrow dirt road, wide enough for one car to pass. By the time the forced evictions were threatened, the two individuals living in each yard were becoming young men in their mid to late twenties and had come to Thembelihle to find a better life: a place where their families could put their heads to rest. Previously, they played a quite limited role in terms of their involvement with the community, but they

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would thereafter share the greater part of two decades of activism together. One young man’s resolute determination for social justice sprung to life as a result of bad luck: running away from the police, Bhayiza Miya (who was attending his first protest under the “new” dispensation) had his teeth shot out, leading him to dedicate a great chunk of his years to offering an alternative to the ruling anc political program. Siphiwe Mbatha (who I will refer to as Mbatha henceforth), who literally ran at his side during these particular shootings, managed to escape, at least that time, unscathed. As we shall see in this chapter, and those that follow, their destinies as political activists would be shaped immensely by state repression. As I sat down in a plastic chair for a conversational interview with Mbatha in his home in Thembelihle, I learned that he had been living for nearly three decades in the very room that we found ourselves in on that sunny winter day in July 2019. Born on 1 September 1976, on the back of the 16 June 1976 uprisings, he grew up in Emdeni, Soweto, at the home of his grandparents from his mother’s side. He would, throughout his childhood, learn to adjust to several different living environments. In 1983, his family moved to Rockville with his mother’s sister but they only stayed there for two years because of squabbles between the two adult siblings. Mbatha remembers that “we were chased out of the house in the middle of the night.” They needed to find alternative accommodation but not necessarily a place he could call home: “We did not have a permanent place to stay where I would say I [actually] lived there.”49 That time, they relocated to Dlamini, another section of Soweto nearby, to stay with his mother’s married friend. Less than a year passed and the family moved yet again, to Phefeni in Orlando West. After that, while Mbatha was in grade four, they trekked down to KwaZulu-Natal because of the state of emergency in the country (it was 1986). His parents had divorced and when he arrived back in 1989, his mother was staying with his stepdad in a backyard dwelling that they rented and which happened to be across the road from his grandmother’s house. The precarious life of staying in accommodation in backyards and with relatives made it difficult to settle down. This circumstance changed as news trickled across segments of Soweto and elsewhere about a vacant plot of land: Then my mum discovered that there was a place in Thembelihle, like they were giving stands to people, people could bring their own material to build and pitch their shacks. While she [my mother] was trying to build, before they could finish, we were chased away from the room where my mum was renting. So it was in September [1990] on a

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3.2 Long-standing resident next to his shack. Siphiwe Mbatha stands outside his shack in Thembelihle. Born in the aftermath of the 1976 Soweto Uprisings in Emdeni, Soweto, his family moved to the nearby Thembelihle in 1990 as it was being occupied by the recently unbanned anc. They sought this land because, unlike when they were renting or staying with relatives, landlords could not evict them and quarrels in the extended family could be kept at bay. Siphiwe has lived in the settlement for more than three decades and is a self-proclaimed socialist whose consciousness grew after police shot him in the knee with a rubber bullet during a protest for electricity in 2011.

Sunday … we came this side and the schools were closed [for vacation] and the shack wasn’t yet finished because we didn’t have any material to finish it up. So we slept in it while it was open [to the air] on the other [side] … In fact, we came here because we did not have any place to stay and also my mother wanted to have her own place where we can call it home. So that is how we arrived here in Thembelihle.50 Mbatha was fourteen years old and tears dripped down his face as the shack began to be erected since, in his words, “it was my first time I had a place to call home.”51 A sense of belonging on a piece of land, one that could be called your own (even if the home on it was built out of corru-

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gated iron) was considered by many incoming Thembelihleans to be a more stable environment than living precariously in a permanent structure under someone else’s roof. Neither the inability to pay rent to the landlord as a tenant in someone’s backyard nor a quarrel in the family could prevent residents in Thembelihle from resting their heads at night. The growing population developed a strong sense of belonging to the land upon which they lived, even if the area was not officially sanctioned by the state. In their eyes, it was rightfully theirs and no one, no political or policy framework, could chase them away. The fact that the transition to democracy was turning the corner as the anc and pac were unbanned and Nelson Mandela and other liberation heroes were released from prison instilled hope in ordinary Black South Africans who had a growing confidence that they could live on the land of their choice. In many areas across the country, the anc, alongside the South African National Civic Organisation (sanco), had begun the process of occupying land for Black community development. Mbatha recalled that they organized a quite formal process through which this took place in Thembelihle: People will come to the office and identify a piece of land and there will be like a committee of people like men who will be measuring maybe like each and every stand should be like thirty by thirty [metres] or twenty by twenty [metres] and then put some sticks or some stones showing that this yard starts here and ends there. When someone comes from the office then they will bring them to where these people are [cutting stands]. Then they will say, “this is your piece of land” [and] then you can build your own shack.52 Anyone who requested land could get it so long as they could pay a small administrative fee of r20 or r40. The proximity of Thembelihle to the Indian community meant that it was “an ideal place of integration of societies where Blacks and Indians will live together … we were also, like, it is fine now, we can live side by side and this was [viewed as] like a ‘good hope’ [that] maybe one day we are going to have integrated communities.”53 The anc had occupied the area, he understood, to become a symbol of what Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu had termed “a rainbow nation.” However, the divide between the two groups that the apartheid system instilled did not vanish as a result of the changing nature of geographical proximity. Instead, as Siphiwe and many other school children would come to experience, the occupation of Thembelihle by Blacks

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within a predominantly Indian community illuminated racial tensions and inequality. In 1991, Mbatha started grade eight at Azara, a predominantly Indian school. He was among the very first Black children to attend but did not complete even one year. This was part of a racist, and at times subtle, strategy by the Indian schools in the area to keep Black people out. Although Blacks lived literally across the street from Indians, they could not be allowed to integrate in an educational environment: I know myself as someone who passed each and every subject and I never failed [previously] ... In each and every class l will be that student who will be in top five when it comes to marks. There was a time when we were not using symbols or percentages. We were using numbers, there was number one, two, three until the last number to those who failed. So my parents and myself knew that l will not be above [the top] five. I will range from number one to four and if l did not do well I will be number five. So when I arrived in Azara l failed all my subjects, there was nothing above 50 per cent. I failed everything. So l was not sure what was going on … Even the teachers who were teaching us were not the same [as I had found in Soweto], most of the teachers were Indians. Some would treat you very badly and you would see that this is racism but you will not say anything since you were just a child, you were there for school.54 When the June 1991 holidays came, Mbatha visited his father’s home in Diepkloof, Soweto, where his grandfather resided. They asked for his report, but he lied and said he had not yet received it: “I was even ashamed to show them.” Eventually the family got hold of his academic records and were “shocked” by how poorly he had done since they had become accustomed to him passing with flying colours. At first his grandfather reasoned that the changing environment might have affected his marks. But when the school was approached to further inquire, his family found the original tests and discovered the truth: the young Mbatha had passed all of his subjects. He and others had been victimized by an explicitly racist pattern: “Most of us were made to fail by the teachers, it was like no Black student passed that year, all of us failed.” He concluded, “It was sort of [intended to be] proven that we are not capable of being part of that [Indian] school … It was a thing of a Black child cannot associate with Indians.” His mother wasted no time and moved him to a school in Johannesburg called Africoms College where he scored first in his class.55

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On 2 December 1995, he had his first-born child, Nonhlanhla. His mother told him he needed to look for work: “I have tried all the best that I can to come through for you to have a proper school and acquire good education, but now you have a child. So I cannot support you and your child.” It did not take long before he found his first formal employment as a security guard in extension thirteen of Lenasia where houses were being built. The guards were hired to prevent materials such as geysers and burglar bars from being stolen while the homes were not yet finished or occupied. The young man obtained a certificate for security and continued to work for the greater part of the late 1990s, but formal employment did not last. So, in 2002, like a great number of Black South Africans, he and his wife developed an alternative method to make money, through informal trading: We got a stand in Lenasia where you can sell. We had a place where we can put a gazebo and we were selling cosmetics, clothes that we bought in town with a stock price. Things like hats depending on the season because now its winter we would stock things like jerseys, scarves and other warm clothes, then when it is summer then we change our clothes. That is how we were surviving while I was not working.56 Mbatha did not grow up in a political vacuum. His grandfather was an

anc member who had spent time imprisoned on Robben Island. Growing up, the grandchildren watched prohibited films about the liberation struggle. Mbatha remembered, “When we watched those [films] we will lock the house so that there is no one who will see you.” The fact that one’s family was predisposed to politics does not make one become naturally involved oneself as he or she grows older. Other people that he knew in the area around his age, in their mid-twenties, had joined local political organizations such as the pac and anc in Thembelihle, but for his part he stayed away: “I was not part of the strikes [protests] mostly because at that time as well I was attending church and I could not be part of politics that much and I had a family to look after.”57 It became clear to Mbatha and the residents who stayed in the shacks around him that the “anc was failing us” since they were witnessing no noticeable improvements in their lives, but it was not necessarily clear to him or the others why this was the case. It was perhaps deduced that the fruits of South African democracy and development had simply not yet arrived in their specific settlement: within this framework, more patience

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was required. At that point, as he recalled, “Obviously I was not aware of the system of socialism or capitalism … I did not know anything about the system like I do understand [now].”58 The year 2002, which witnessed the attempted forced evictions of Thembelihleans endorsed by the anc government, had a decisive yet uneven effect on the consciousness of soon-to-be local activists. Mbatha recalled that, in the lead up to the evictions: There was a paper when you go out [to the streets]. It was put up on a pole, it was a bunch of [pieces of paper] of a book. We did not care about that. Maybe we thought it was some development which was coming … I remember I was not part of the meeting [which I later learned about] that was called by the councillor which he was saying that people will be moved to Vlakfontein, but on the day when the Red Ants were here, that is when I hear people shouting and I could see these Red Ants passing.59 He asked himself, “What’s going on?” A man running by his shack told him that they were being evicted. There was a group heading from the main road on the edge of the settlement where the evictions began towards his own shack and he decided to join them. A fight soon broke out between the community and the Red Ants. Stones were being hurled by residents as the human-stinging-ants fought back with crowbars.60

“i have been shot” Mbatha lived within a stone’s throw of a slightly older man named Bhayiza Miya who would soon be thrust into the spotlight of militancy or, at this point, what is better described as community- and self-defence. Born on 12 December 1974 in Zola, Soweto, he has eight brothers and one sister. As he was growing up, his family moved to Dube, Soweto, and he became an avid soccer player and, like his father, “a boxing fanatic.” Due to corporal punishment and degradation by his teachers, Bhayiza dropped out of school after grade seven. His parents were pensioners by then and in 1990 they moved to a more rural area called Zuurbekom in Westonaria in order to farm. Bhayiza had an older brother, who moved to start making a home for himself in a place called Thembelihle: “As I was growing up I wanted to have my own place to stay. So my brother organized my current place that I am staying in. So I paid r600 [about US$40 at the 2021 exchange rates] to the guy who was living here [in this yard that we

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are sitting in now] … he went back to the Eastern Cape. So when I came here it was in 1995.61 He remained inspired by the anc as he grew up, witnessing the activities of the infamous Mandela United Football Club, a relentless group of young men led by Nelson’s wife at the time, Winnie Mandela. The club has a controversial history and is well-known for isolating, and sometimes even killing suspected impimpis (as “informers” or “sell-outs” are called) in the late 1980s at the height of the anti-apartheid struggle. When the anc came into power in 1994, he was among those who hailed the political party: “I remember the whole of South Africa had this thing when [Nelson] Mandela was released. So I was one of those people who thought that the anc had fought for our liberation.” His older brothers were members of the anc, but he was less involved as a supporter and when he voted in 1994, “It was like we are now free.” Two or three years down the line, it appeared to him that there was no need for building further struggle.62 At that point he was in his early twenties and had never worked in any formal job. Within three weeks of moving to Thembelihle he had opened up his own tuck shop to survive: “When I came here my intention was not to reside here per se, because I was unemployed. The main reason was to make a living and try to make money.” He was twenty-seven years old when the Red Ants came to evict the residents of Thembelihle. Bhayiza described it as “forced removals of the apartheid type.” At the time, he did not know about the laws or policies that were being enacted to justify the evictions: “So I partake in that protest as a supporter of the anc. But looking at it [later on], like, who exactly is evicting us from this area? It was the anc. So I went to the street to the community where people were. It was my first protest [which I attended] and it was the first protest of the [entire] community.”63 The Red Ants started on the edges of Thembelihle near the shack that an older woman, a granny, lived in. Perhaps they chose to start with the weakest in the hope that others would also then readily submit to their force. Her shack was the first to be demolished.“So when we were demonstrating this side at K-43,” Bhayiza recollected, “we were told Red Ants are demolishing shacks [so] we moved in our numbers.” Sixteen years later when we sat down in his yard together to talk, the events remained etched within his consciousness: “I remember very vividly those Red Ants ran to their trucks, as brutal as they are. They only demolished one shack of that granny and were chased out of Thembelihle.”64 At the height of the day’s sustained conflict, the two neighbours, Mbatha and Bhayiza, stood by each other’s side, united in their resolve to pre-

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vent themselves and other Thembelihleans being evicted from their homes. The police had joined in and a group of residents continued a bitter physical battle. Mbatha recollected being told by Bhayiza, “Guys do not throw stones but let us try to talk to them”: He [Bhayiza] was trying to calm them down, people were frustrated, they were throwing stones to the police and during that time I was next to him. You know [how it feels] when there are shots nearby. I said, “Bhayiza let’s run!” Unfortunately I turned quickly and he turned late. When I was running I could not hear his footsteps towards me, that is when I looked around and then he was like, “I have been shot” … he had blood in his mouth. Suddenly the police stopped shooting because the cameras were coming straight to Bhayiza.65 Bhayiza lost six teeth and had about a dozen stitches as a result of taking part in his very first community protest. He could not have imagined the way in which this single event would transform his political identity and catapult his pro-socialist activism within and beyond Thembelihle. According to his own account: I remember very vividly when people were, now, running away from the police [who had arrived on the scene to support the Red Ants] … they were given five minutes to disperse so the police started firing … So when the police started firing I moved on the side because I couldn’t run to the camp because the police were very close. So I saw that if I run that direction they will hurt me, so I went on the side of a white journalist who was standing there. So I stood beside [him] because I could see the danger of me running to the camp. People were stoning at the police so I was standing on the side, not where the other people were, so bam! I was shot and I lost about six teeth. Then I went to the police to ask why I was shot at.66 His lips had been ripped apart by the force of the rubber bullet. He walked urgently towards the police, blood dripping from his mouth and barely able to murmur words, to inquire why he had been shot at. He wondered how he could so easily become a target of the state’s armed men and women. The police of course could not offer a sensible reply but nevertheless responded positively by sending him to the hospital, where he was given about a dozen stitches.

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Upon his release, it was clear in his own mind that he had been part of no wrongdoing since he did not throw any stones on that day. Bhayiza proceeded to open a case against the police at the nearby station. The police arrived early the following morning with the anc’s mec for Safety and Security, Nomvula Mokonyane, who requested his statement: “They were not arresting me [at first] but they wanted a statement because they said the statement that I gave did not give them more of what exactly transpired.” The mec was on the offensive. From their perspective, the move to evict residents was legitimate and protestors were violently resisting authority. Bhayiza was placed in a police vehicle. About fifty other people in the settlement were arrested that evening on charges of public violence. The wheels of justice continued to run backwards. When they arrived at the station the captain pointed to Bhayiza and said, “No that one, he is implicating himself in the statement he made.”67 In other words, his police statement was used as a tool to identify him and his address and to confirm his involvement in the resistance. The young man stayed in jail for three days with no hearing. On the fourth day he went to court but did not appear before the magistrate. He was then moved from the Lenasia court to the nearby Protea magistrate’s court where he met the same captain who remonstrated Bhayiza: “Next time I do not want you to be near where there are more than ten people and to be involved in these protests. If you are going to involve yourself in these we are going to do one, two and three.” Bhayiza had negotiated with the demonstrators in order to prevent unnecessary violence. And yet precisely because he experienced state brutality and opened up a case against the very police responsible for the fact that he was missing six teeth, he was further victimized. An activist was reborn: There were threats and things that were said [by the commander]. As a South African, someone whom was in the middle of celebrating freedom, then I could see the similarities between the apartheid and the current government. When I walked out of the station to my place, people who supported me it was Thembelihle Crisis Committee. By then I did not even know about them. The comrades came to visit me and that is when everything started, I begin to involve myself with tcc in solving [the] community crisis.68 Thinking back to the 1980s and early 1990s, he recalled that “In my house, we used to talk politics.” His older brothers were members of the anc and the same discussions that they had back then were reminiscent

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of the predicament he found himself in under the relatively new democracy in Thembelihle in mid-2002. The government that was perceived to be the liberator had turned on his community as they had begun to do since the late 1990s when evictions and water and electricity cut-offs associated with neoliberal cost-recovery policies began to intersect with the lives of ordinary poor people on the ground in their homes. Bhayiza recalls being told by his brothers that “the apartheid government will lock you up without appearing before the courts.”69 A new oppressor, it appeared, had emerged and the residents of Thembelihle were bearing its brunt.

conclusion Specific historical incidents, including apartheid’s forced removals of Black people from Sophiatown from 1955 to 1960, came to Bhayiza’s mind at that time. Black owners of homes had allowed tenants to build shacks in their back yards to help them pay rent, but the so-called overcrowding was too much for the white government. The Native Resettlement Act No. 19 of 1954 called for the “clean-up” of cities, including Johannesburg, and essentially the elimination of slums. Four decades later it seemed that these same policies were reflected under the rule of the anc: The force removals, when l came to Thembelihle during that year I experienced it. So for me it was the beginning of saying these people [the anc] are coming back with the very same things because they did that to me. It was not something that I heard from somewhere, [rather] it was done [directly] to me. So I spent days without appearing to the court so it was their intimidation tactics to say “do not continue with the case.” So that was motivation to me.70 In part as a response to police repression and forced removals in Thembelihle there emerged new activists intent on serving the community. Trevor Ngwane, a scholar-activist who has studied and worked for nearly twenty years with activists in Thembelihle, succinctly summarized a situation in which “The residents’ victory was decisive” and added that “The new spirit of triumphant defiance put wind in the sails of the tcc, catapulting it forward as a leading organisation in the settlement.”71 On the one hand, for the dispossessed in Thembelihle, participation in local governance processes through the People’s Parliament was and remains merely a matter of survival: it is self-defence against a top-down

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state intent on imposing government plans onto a community. But for a relatively small group who self-identify as revolutionary Marxists, it is much more than this. Complementing the mass meeting are the democratic executive and members’ meetings which have, due to the commitment of a core group of activists, been held regularly by the tcc since it became more democratically oriented in late 2002. The secc has acted as a model for the form of organization within and beyond Thembelihle. The origins of the tcc are to a significant extent rooted within the structures of the secc and the following chapter therefore homes in on the historical context in which this crisis committee was formed. The secc was one of South Africa’s first militant and socialist social movements to crop up in the post-apartheid period. The secc challenged the effects of the anc’s neoliberal policies on working-class Sowetans who were having their electricity cut off in the distorted vision of cost-recovery and “responsible” paying citizens. While the lifeblood of the People’s Parliament is the residents of the community, its consistent, dedicated guide, or leadership, is a small group within the tcc. The next chapter demonstrates how these leaders shifted from a primarily defensive and relatively localized approach to a more outward-oriented and offensive movement for social justice. It explores the ways in which the first wave of new social movements in postapartheid South Africa affected the socialist trajectory in the community and its involvement in working class and electoral politics as well as international solidarity. Having dealt in detail with the emergence of a noninstitutional or autonomous space for change, the next chapter addresses the centrality of democratic forms. It investigates the choices of strategies and tactics of grassroots activists in their attempt to access power both within and outside the state and the ways in which these link to broader political processes. Scholars and activists have been taught and conditioned to think about participatory governance in boardrooms, at relatively stable town and city planning meetings and within the confines of a hegemonic capitalist framework. But this is not the only, and perhaps not the primary, way in which these potentially democratic processes unfold in reality. Unpacking the social and historical nature of the People’s Parliament and tcc highlights that empowered participatory governance (epg) can be initiated at the grassroots level rather than primarily by the state. The organizational forms and political biographies of activists in Thembelihle appear to epitomize the radical, “people-centred” or “bottom-up” approach that Rahnema’s development “saints” continue to yearn for in

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their supposedly “saintly mission to serve and work with the poor” (Rahnema). Such preconceived and romantic accounts, however, paint a static and homogenous picture of the poor which paradoxically undermines their agency and, as we shall see, also obscures lingering top-down and broader structural processes. What happens “from below” changes over time and is subject to contestation since it is contingent upon local and broader power relations as well as (the next chapter suggests) the political and ideological role of individual activists and networks.

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4 Electing Working-Class Activists

The history of the left’s imagination is replete with debates about whether or not and how to participate in prevailing institutional and governance structures. In part reflecting discourses adopted by movements themselves, scholars have tended to suggest that social movements use extrainstitutional means by which to access the levers of power held by political parties. Specifically, they have created a misleading binary between political parties and elite institutions, on the one hand, and popular mobilization by marginalized groups on the other. Referring to Gamson,1 Goldstone indicates that social movements are often depicted as “‘outsider’ groups whose challenges succeed, in one sense, as such groups become recognized actors in institutionalized politics.”2 To put it another way, when social movements become effective at accessing formal political decision-making processes, they die down. A more nuanced approach challenges this binary between social movement activities (as outsiders seeking access to power) and political party activities (as insiders with power). It suggests that “social movements are deeply entwined with normal politics.”3 Let us now shift briefly to the periphery of Europe in the context of the post-2008 economic crisis where austerity measures haunted France, Spain, Greece, and Italy, amongst others. The Latin American experiment of the 1990s and then later the experiment of southern Europe in the 2010s speaks to the potential and limits of alternative institutions which were sparked by grassroots movements. And unlike the rise of the right in the Western Europe core (Germany, Britain, and France), the organized “left” in Spain, Greece, and Italy were major beneficiaries of dissent, with the exception of Germany’s Die Linke. In Britain, Corbyn and the left took power in the Labour Party and there was a rise of the socialist left in the 2017

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French elections, but this was quickly vanquished by Macron’s coalition. While the direct democracy employed by the Occupy movement in the US tended to shy away from formal politics, aspects of the anti-austerity movement in Europe would, to a certain extent, be channelled through the state’s institutions. During nation-wide, mass anti-austerity social upheavals in Spain on 15 May 2011, protestors chanted, “They [elite politicians] don’t represent us!” and “Real democracy now!”4 The left-leaning Podemos in turn promised “direct democracy” and “direct participation.” Greece’s Syriza, which emerged out of a radical left coalition, undertook a similar process whereby it claimed to represent the vast majority of ordinary people, the “99 per cent,” when it came to power in 2015. Many activists and scholars who sought to mobilize the institutions of state power in the service of the people in an effort to challenge neoliberalism developed a renewed sense of hope. It appeared, momentarily, that “anti-austerity” governments in Europe were on the horizon. Distinguishing democracy as the “power of the people” from a neoliberal authoritarian state, the possibility of anti-establishment “participatory parties” came to centre stage. Mainstream parties had failed, it was argued, and a fundamentally new way of doing politics was necessary. Inspired by the leftleaning Latin American Pink Tide associated with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia, and consolidation of the left into parties in Europe, Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos in Spain, and Alexis Tsipras, the leader of Syriza in Greece, had themselves developed politically through their work in the global justice movement. Speaking at a rally, Iglesias said “Venceremos [we will win].” Referring to the unity of Syriza and Podemos, he said, these are “the wind[s] of change.”5 The inclination was towards “a more democratized and transparent political system, and, last but not least, a genuine involvement of the people in the political process.”6 Iglesias himself termed the process “a participatory method open to all citizens.”7 Yet it was not long before the fault lines were drawn. The paradox is that once the left held the reins of state power, participation of ordinary people tended to dissolve. Quickly – within a matter of months – austerity and associated privatization and neoliberal policies in Greece would deepen even further. Podemos, by the end of 2014, would move to the centre-left and put in place procedures involving the “deactivation” of the institutions designed to enable ordinary people to be involved in deliberations as they “came to be supporters and propagators of the leadership’s line.”8 Local and regional activism, I argue, may also produce and sustain left politics. Moreover, it remains possible to imagine a world in which elec-

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toral politics are intimately tied not only to institutional processes of participatory governance but also to grassroots militancy and action locally. In Thembelihle, what appears at face value to be institutionalized is in fact better understood as an extension of contentious politics. The chapter centres on unique, small-scale, and local experiences in South Africa with radical governance in the form of a socialist electoral front called the Operation Khanyisa Movement (okm) which was formed by residents in order to have greater power within and over the state. It is suggested that this experiment offers a potential way out of the paradox of participation. The chapter tells the story of how local militants, in the absence of overarching state power on a national level, strategized in order to gain a degree of leverage over the development process. Its size is small, like the left opposition to the tripartite alliance more generally in the country, but its political content is arguably the most advanced. The okm was not brought into power by a nation-wide movement, although one if its aims was to root itself within the growing national crisis over service delivery – access mainly to water, electricity, and housing. Two nearby local civic movements in Gauteng province, the secc and the tcc, were the driving forces behind the okm which sought to harness the energy of urban protestors and provide an institutional and political home for those disenchanted with the ruling anc. The okm is perhaps the only political party in South Africa that is directly rooted in, controlled by, and accountable to grassroots structures. The party’s candidates are not paid a salary, and the right of recall (that is the right to immediately remove elected officials) is used in order that they are under direct control by the community organizations that elected them. The next section explores the origins of the secc, which provided a springboard for the okm and sought to unite militant grassroots leaders under its banner, before the chapter turns to the party itself specifically in Thembelihle. Joining and campaigning for it involves building a platform for radical politics within and beyond Thembelihle’s borders. This partly helps explain why those who are most closely aligned to this particular political party in Thembelihle have been major targets of the state: two activists in particular in 2011, in the context of the local government elections, were arrested and charged with intimidation in Thembelihle. The core of the chapter explores the struggle of the community to participate in governance processes by focusing on the relationship between institutionalized politics and protests around the pressing issue of the lack of access to electricity in Thembelihle that has led to the fires that burned residents to death in their shacks. The chapter then turns to local activists’ involvement

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in what were then new left politics in South Africa, the so-called numsa (National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa) moment, in the aftermath of the Marikana massacre.

okm’s ideological godfather It is no accident that the tcc’s outlook, and indeed its own constitution, reflect strong socialist tendencies rooted in the idea that the working class and poor must mobilize collectively against capitalism. Their policies and practices are infused with a sense that the neoliberal ruling party (the anc) excludes the vast majority from accessing basic needs and that what is needed is for them to create and sustain a genuine bottom-up participatory approach where all, as opposed to an elite few, can reap the fruits of democracy. Over time, and relatively quickly, it became clear to leading figures within the tcc that, in order for this to be effective, their demands for housing, water, and electricity needed to extend far beyond the boundaries of their own narrow constituency. In other words, they needed to reach out to other individuals involved in the emerging independent working-class mass-based organizations. Trevor Ngwane was a leading intellectual figure in the formation and ideological framing of the okm. He also has a tight relationship with historical and contemporary leaders in Thembelihle. He was to become a decisive and influential community activist in South Africa from the late 1990s when he was expelled from the anc for opposing the implementation of its neoliberal cost-recovery policies. But his political activism was shaped by a range of events well before this. Like the people of Thembelihle, his own community, to which he had migrated in order to also find a better life, was being marginalized by the development priorities of the ruling party. His political orientation as a grounded Marxist, dedicated to improving the lives of the oppressed majority through democratic organizing, would contribute to key features of the struggle in Thembelihle, which was less than twelve kilometres from his home at the time in Pimville, Soweto. Born in Durban in 1960, Trevor is the son of two nurses, and his father was also an activist in the anc. The fact that his grandparents were preachers most likely contributed to his own oratory skills which, to this day, are demonstrated masterfully during political speeches. In an interview in 2003 which appeared in New Left Review, he explained that the political situation in the country had a significant impact on his schooling during his teenage years:

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It [the Catholic school outside Durban] had a really strict regime, with punishments for everything. The food was terrible, too. I was there for four years – I was expelled after the school strike in 1976. Not that I was particularly political: more of a rebel in a generic sense, getting caught out of bounds or drinking. But there was a spontaneous strike at our school after the police massacres in Soweto on 16 June 1976. The situation was very tense … I didn’t play much of a part but these things quickly affect everyone … We were all expelled, sent home. A month later the school authorities handpicked the ones they wanted to return. But they told my brother and me not to come back – they had some problem with me. After that, I transferred to a township school in Newcastle, on the other side of Natal, where my father was living. I matriculated there.9 In 1979, Trevor enrolled at Fort Hare University in the Eastern Cape where the likes of anc stalwarts such as Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela had previously attended. Trevor took up sociology, and four decades later, when this book was being written, he was a colleague of mine at the University of Johannesburg’s sociology department. He remembered being “fascinated by the ideas” and described a situation in which “a whole new world opened up [to me].”10 By 1980, when Mozambique obtained independence, student protests again emerged, this time in support of frelimo (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique). A major boycott at Fort Hare garnered the support of virtually every student, including Trevor: “There was hope. But also we felt, at least myself and my friends, that we were so oppressed at that university.” He and others were then expelled for “political disturbances,” and he and others began to develop a stronger sense of how the structures of apartheid linked to their local conditions at the university, but most of his fellows were simply interested in passing courses.11 His decision to move to Soweto to take up employment as a researcher would have important implications for local politics in the southwest of Johannesburg and beyond. While continuing his degree through the University of South Africa, the conditions in which he lived and travelled were quite precarious: The [racist] pass laws [Blacks were required to carry a pass to work in areas designated for whites] were still in force – they’d ask you for your pass and arrest you if you didn’t have it – and the eight o’clock curfew. When I arrived here I didn’t have anywhere to stay. I squatted

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around in different parts of Soweto, including the Salvation Army, until I found a place. First I was living in a backroom, then I graduated to a backyard garage. That was bigger, but there were insulation problems, what with the roll-down door and everything.12 Backyard garages can be sizeable. Large enough to fit one if not two cars, they are often converted into rental accommodation by families who are paying back their home bonds or for an income. While they lack the proper insulation, they are stable structures, and they do not leak or get as piping hot as the shacks in which people stay in Thembelihle and other informal settlements that would spring up across the country in the decades to follow. In the mid-1980s there were township uprisings which changed the political landscape of the country. Apartheid was in a deep crisis. In particular, “Soweto was burning – it affected everyone,” he recalled. Having completed his ba in sociology, Trevor began an ma program at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. He took part-time jobs as a tutor and a junior lecturer and it was at Wits, following the apartheid government’s declaration of a state of emergency, that he experienced a further transformation of his political consciousness: “It was in those years [leading up to 1988] that I became a Marxist. There was a small group of us who are still close comrades, who would read and talk things through; they’ve seen me through a lot.”13 In his late twenties, he conceptualized and taught his own courses, including “Class and Nationalism,” the pac, and Afrikaner nationalism. “Our orientation was towards the anc … we supported workers who wanted to fashion it as a weapon of struggle.” They argued for the need to unban the anc. His commitment at this time, from his perspective, was mainly intellectual.14 The greater part of the rest of his adult life, however, would still embed his own thinking within a theoretical Marxist tradition but with the primary objective of linking theory to practice by linking to pre-existing struggles with a view towards building formalized mass-based organizations on the ground. Winnie Mandela was a student in one of his courses at Wits. In line with a student-centred approach, which takes as a starting point the preexisting experiences and knowledge of pupils, one student would present and analyse the reading material each week, “and on Winnie’s day, she came dressed in full anc regalia with a prepared speech about the movement. We even managed to use banned material in my course reader – Marx, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, [Joe] Slovo, the whole lot. During the wave of

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mass arrests when the State of Emergency was declared in 1986 one of my students, Pascal Moloi, got detained. So we took his course work and all this material into jail.”15 In the late 1980s, the young lecturer started the Workers’ Literacy Project, which sought to teach cleaners how to read and write and also focused on political education. According to Trevor, “We commandeered the tearoom to start teaching them … my students all joined in.” The elitist nature of the university academics, perhaps not wanting ordinary workers with no degrees taking over the privacy of the tearoom, soon “squeezed” him out of the sociology department.16 South Africa was going through the transition from apartheid to a fully fledged democracy in the early 1990s when Trevor himself first joined the anc and found a job as political education officer at the Transport and General Workers Union. He was elected in 2000 as a local government ward councillor in Soweto with an optimism that the people-centred Reconstruction and Development Programme (rdp) could bring some relief to the disenfranchised in his community and beyond: “My first job in the Pimville ward was to call public meetings, with representatives from the civic, the community organisations, the anc, to draw up a participatory budget where the local people could list their own priorities.”17 It became more and more clear, however, that the rdp was being ditched in favour of the neoliberal Growth Employment and Redistribution (gear) program. It became apparent, as was the case in Spain, that participatory programs could not coincide with austerity. It is in this light that the then anc councillor pointed out that people come knocking at his door to ask for housing and employment opportunities but that he does not make the large-scale or structural and policy decisions which determine whether or not the local government can provide these. In 1999 the government announced plans to develop Johannesburg through a set of policies titled Igoli 2002, which would involve a move to further privatize basic services in order to implement cost recovery in line with the World Bank’s own neoliberal approach. At the time, President Thabo Mbeki announced that “the people have spoken.” Ngwane replied with an article called, “The People Have Not Spoken,” for which he was suspended from the anc indefinitely.18 One of the first and most important civics in post-apartheid South Africa to challenge aspects of the anc’s neoliberal cost-recovery policies, a mass movement called the secc, was founded in 2001 by Trevor, amongst others, to resist the disconnection of thousands of households, mainly pensioners, which were allegedly not paying for their historical debt.19 An articulate and vocal leader, capable of linking global struggles to local conditions, Trevor became its unofficial spokesperson. Soweto’s symbolic role

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in national and even international politics would be reignited. Soweto’s unique history and homegrown “spirit of defiance,” combined with an acute crisis in people’s access to basic services such as electricity, created the conditions for widespread resistance locally, and for the development of socialist consciousness. Trevor, who was a generation older than most of the leading activists in Thembelihle at the time that the tcc was beginning to gain major traction as a genuine representative of the community which was successful at resisting evictions, would be amongst the leading figures in the development of this Thembelihle civic. The consolidation of the anc’s neoliberal approach, especially its plan for cost recovery in Johannesburg, provided the impetus more generally for new community-based crisis civics, made up mostly of the underemployed and unemployed who bore the brunt of these policies across the country. In a context where citizens were marginalized, even repressed, by the anc, the Anti-Privatisation Forum (apf) was created by activists and former trade unionists as an umbrella which sought to unite communitybased struggles under a broad anti-capitalist platform. Furthermore, the World Summit for Sustainable Development (wssd) in 2002 witnessed a major demonstration – about 20,000 people – which was then perhaps the largest anti-government demonstration in the post-apartheid period. The next section explores the relationship that was built between Soweto activists and those in Thembelihle (only a few minutes’ drive away from each other), before honing in on their strategic decision to form the socialist electoral front, the okm.

thembelihle activists meet south africa’s “new” social movements The apf became centred on the key issues of water and electricity cut-offs, access to housing, and the prevention of forced evictions. The two civics, the secc and tcc, would join the apf and, over time, develop leading anti-capitalist intellectuals and activists in their communities. According to the apf website, it, “unite[s] struggles against privatisation in the workplace and community. It is open to any organisation or individual opposed to privatisation. The apf links workers” struggles for a living wage with jobs with community struggles for housing, water, electricity, and fair rates and taxes. The apf has successfully linked struggles in communities in townships across Gauteng and around South Africa. It provides a forum for communities and workers to share their experiences and to strategize collectively.”20

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The working class, it is argued, is most adversely affected by the privatization of goods and services and this is where struggles against privatization are most acute. “From the perspective of apf activists,” researchers Miraftab and Wills have pointed out, “the state’s policies of privatisation and cost recovery should be understood as policies that in and of themselves dehumanize the poor.”21 At its peak in the early to mid-2000s, and in an attempt to link its anti-capitalist ideological approach to the ground, the apf umbrella worked fairly closely with more than thirty affiliates – mostly in poor and workingclass townships and informal settlements in Gauteng. Though the apf could be viewed mainly as providing solidarity to communities engaged in direct action, perhaps the single most important contribution that it made was, in fact, to education: “The apf conducts workshops in communities on issues related to privatisation. These workshops focus on developing the capacity of comrades to critically analyse their situation, to understand the root causes of privatisation, to learn from the experiences of other communities, and to strategize and undertake collective action.”22 The secc developed some of the most intimate and meaningful relationships with other civics in Gauteng, including, especially, with comrades in the neighbouring Thembelihle. A young activist at the centre of the tcc’s activities at the time, Siphiwe Segodi explained the genesis of the links that were created in the early 2000s: We were having one of our [own] activities in the community. We had a march, the march was directed to [Mayor Amos] Masondo but we did not have the resources to get to Masondo [’s office] so we planned to meet him at the nearest police station. Then they send the Metro Police guy to come and collect the memorandum there. But fortunately the activity was well covered … the media was involved … the organizer of the secc at that time, Bongani Lubisi, was listening … we left our contact details [for him]. He contacted us to say, “Your struggle is our struggle, can we meet to discuss it?” That’s how we got to link with the secc, which was already an affiliate of the Anti-Privatisation Forum. So we were also introduced to apf and tcc later became part of the apf.23 Segodi further elaborated that the tcc “was inspired by the secc, at that time.”24 It was also important, of course, that Trevor was present and gave strategic advice at the peak of Crisis (the forerunner of the tcc) as the evictions were being carried out. Unlike the vast majority of civics, which tend to be more ad hoc and lack an explicit political orientation, both of these civics, not coincidentally,

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4.1 Youth leader addresses meeting. A youth leader in Thembelihle addresses those in attendance at one of the many political education workshops in the settlement.

have a constitution. Their socialist identity comes through in their meetings, as they network with others and provide solidarity. The tcc’s constitution states that, although its main aim is to achieve the development of their own community through in situ upgrading, they also “strive for maximum unity of the working class in general in the struggle against the capitalist class and the state”.25 Its objectives, include, amongst others, to: Eradicate gender inequality, racial discrimination, tribalism, xenophobia, homophobia, and all other forms of oppression. To align ourselves internationally with other formations of the working class and poor fighting against capitalist exploitation and oppression. To use solidarity and working class methods of struggle including mass democratic organisation, mass action, mobilisation, and campaigning as the foundation to win our struggles.26

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This must be done by “encouraging active participation, control and ownership by members of the community.” In light of this the tcc’s activities are, like the secc, “guided by the vision of socialism.”27 Seeing that the crisis committee in Soweto was connecting those whose electricity had been disconnected, leaders in Thembelihle believed they could also find a means of accessing electricity. The poor in the formal township of Soweto were cut off because they didn’t have money to pay, while those in Thembelihle remained without electricity because they were not yet formally recognized by the state. No infrastructure for electricity existed and it was not on the cards for this to be delivered. While the struggle in Thembelihle was initially almost entirely isolated from other political formations, it became increasingly evident to leading activists that firm links amongst community-based structures in different areas were essential. Standing alone, they thought, would not suffice. According to Segodi, You know sometimes when you’re in the struggle there is that idea or that politics of saying, “no we must fight our own fight!” but when we began to link up with other struggles it became clear that, it is not [only] our struggle but there are struggles that we need to link with and I must mention that the question of solidarity, it became clear that it is very, very important. Because I remember when various activities happened in Thembelihle … people from Soweto will come and visit our mass meetings where they’ll also give their side of the story, their sufferings and then the people of Thembelihle will also realize that they are not standing alone in their suffering, there are other people and who are interested in supporting us.28 The secc had a campaign called “Fire the Councillor, Fire the Mayor,” which the tcc also joined given that they were engaged in a struggle both against the mayor and also their local councillor. Segodi further elaborated, “We also go to [our local] councillor with that campaign because we realized that the immediate cause of our problem at that time was the councillor so we need to direct our anger to him.”29 On 6 April 2002 the tcc joined the comrades in Soweto to collectively demand that the mayor, Amos Masondo, respond to residents’ grievances, especially around electricity, but also around housing and evictions. Activists decided to take a bus and gather outside his home in Kensington, Johannesburg. Egan and Wafer described this as the secc’s “defining moment”: “The events which became known as the k87 … nearly 100

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secc members, many of them pensioners arrived at the mayor[’s] … home to present a petition and protest against power cuts. When the crowd tried to disconnect the mayor’s electricity, an altercation with bodyguards turned into a minor riot and two people were wounded. Police arrested eighty-seven people after the incident, including secc leader Trevor Ngwane.”30 This was to become an important turning point for grassroots struggles in Johannesburg and in the country more generally, since it signified not only the strength and unity of grassroots movements in a context where the anc was viewed as a hegemonic powerhouse in government but also the willingness of the state to arrest dissenters. Critically, it further strengthened ties between tcc and secc as they were jailed alongside each other and together they obtained recognition in the context of the growing anti-globalization movement internationally. Practically overnight, South Africa’s struggles appeared to align with the poor and disenfranchised around the world who were victims of the onslaught of neoliberalism. Ngwane and the apf insisted that the poor in South Africa are objects of the anc’s capitalist trajectory which serves a small minority of business owners, investors, and elites. One can conclude that the apf sees the anc as adopting policies that bind poor people into a state of oppression, thereby limiting their agency or ability to control their own destinies. It is no surprise then that, less than a decade after the anc came into power, “most state institutions are hostile to [what they considered to be] the “ultra-left” and seek to close down spaces for the existence of radical movements such as the apf.”31 As in the case of the k87, activists were continually criminalized in order to enable the anc to maintain its hegemony as the sole political power that has a mandate (based on its electoral success but also its historical reputation of liberating the oppressed from apartheid rule) to represent the Black majority. The apf called this “arresting democracy,” to reflect the ways in which the ruling party at the time closed off spaces for grassroots democracy by abusing the criminal justice system.32 Through electricity reconnections, the secc “turned what was a criminal deed from the point of view of Eskom into an act of defiance.”33 The two orientations (resisting top-down evictions, by the tcc, and reconnecting electricity, by the secc) dovetailed nicely. These civics created alternative discursive frameworks through which to understand legitimate actions. Top-down decisions by a neoliberal government, in their view, were unjust. The objective of participation, as promoted by the apf, was to create a radical project with an active notion of citizenship that could define the underlying process of social change from the perspective

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of the marginalized so that they could liberate themselves from the neoliberal system of oppression adopted by the anc. But for a significant handful of civics, most notably the secc and tcc (and seven other apf affiliates in Gauteng), the broad forum to support local anti-capitalist struggles was a necessary, yet insufficient, mechanism through which to access the institutional power of the state in the context of widespread anc electoral hegemony. In the lead-up to the 2006 local government elections, they concluded that a party in the form of an electoral front, with township activists standing as candidates, could help advance their quest to build working-class power.

the “tcc stroke okm”: an integrated approach In contrast to mainstream (or what many South African activists refer to as bourgeois) political parties that tend to suppress working-class dissent, I will advance the argument that the okm organized itself on the basis of building working-class power locally and to a certain, albeit lesser, extent, nationally and internationally. The party was not imposed from above by a top-down political force or by external Marxist activists. In Thembelihle, activists affectionately refer to themselves, when asked about their political affiliation at meetings, as: “tcc stroke okm [tcc/okm].”34 The two organizations are best understood as an integrated whole, rather than as separate entities, in local activists’ thoughts and practice. Central to the party was its pledge which states that, if elected, 100 per cent of a councillor’s salary will go to the okm as an organization and also subjects them to immediate right of recall if they fail to commit their energy to fighting for socialism. The functional way in which prospective councillors were held to account to the pledge that they signed was not through legalistic frameworks. Instead, the civics that constitute the okm held them to account. According to okm planning documents, “The okm is fighting for democratic control of local government,” which is underpinned by three central tenets: 1. A worker’s government that is run by and controlled by ordinary working-class people. 2. Accountable councillors who operate according to the mandate of those who elect them. 3. The right to recall government representatives who fail in their duties.35

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The pledge itself reads: “100% of my salary will go to the Operation Khanyisa Movement (okm) coffers or my local organization that is part of okm. I will be paid enough money to cover my basic needs and carry out my duties. okm will decide how much I get paid. I want to be a councillor not to enrich myself or my family but to serve my community and to take forward the struggle of the working class and poor.”36 The pledge matters to the extent that it exists within the lived experiences of ordinary people. Crucially, the ideas which underpin it are deeply engrained within the hearts and minds of activists who carry out their duties on a daily basis in the service not only of themselves and their own community, but for the working class more generally. The decision of community-based civics to enter directly into electoral politics was taken in the context of the anc’s relative hegemony. According to Bhayiza Miya, who himself stood as a local candidate in Ward Eight (which encompasses Thembelihle, amongst other areas), this was a necessary strategy since “we go home and see the very same anc ward councillor going into power who has failed us before and [it seems as if] we have done nothing, so it’s there that we decided that they only way is to put our own councillor there.”37 A resolution was taken in the lead up to the 2006 elections that one vocal leader from each of the nine civic organizations would stand a candidate in their ward. The prospects and politics were carefully developed with a view towards scaling up this electoral process, but it also reflected the relative lack of electoral support which it had on the ground. No prospective ward councillor obtained enough votes to get a seat in the local government council chambers, but they did obtain a proportional representation (pr) seat as a result of the okm receiving a cumulative total of 4,305 votes. According to Pingo, the pr seat is “not won solely through votes accumulated in a single ward but across wards. The percentage of total proportional representative votes received across the City of Johannesburg will determine the amount of pr seats allocated to each political party.”38 The electoral front chose Joyce Mkhonza from the secc as their pr councillor. Later, she attempted to cross the floor to another political party, but the civics reeled her back in and, enforcing the “right of recall,” had her removed, and replaced with Zodwa Madiba, a proven socialist activist in Soweto. This could be viewed as a failure on a personal level, but it also pointed to the success of the “pledge” since Mkhonza was effectively recalled by the grassroots structures. Bhayiza was chosen to stand as a candidate specifically in Thembelihle in 2006 as he literally wore his activism on his face, having had his teeth shot out by the police in 2002 as related in the previous chapter. The ideas

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and consistent, regular meetings of the “okm stroke tcc” would attract people in the community, both young and old, to join the socialist platform, including Edwin Lefutswane, known as Sibi. I had the opportunity to sit directly across from him in his neighbour’s shack for an interview. He smiled and his eyes lit up when we engaged, a reflection of a young dignified man who is proud of his community’s activism and the role he has played in it over the years. At the tender age of eleven he had already emerged as one of the first activists in the okm. He was energetic and posted flyers of the party’s socialist candidate in the ward: the tcc’s and the community’s very own Bhayiza. Sibi would later, in his twenties, serve in multiple positions as an executive member of the tcc. Born on 27 December 1994 in the aftermath of South Africa’s first democratic elections in a rural area called Zeerust in Northwest province, the extent to which he and other soon-to-be Thembelihleans were “born free” is hotly contested. His mother moved to Thembelihle when he was about two years old in order to find work. Sibi stayed behind with his grandmother. In his words, she migrated to Thembelihle “for survival … to work and feed our family back at home [in Zeerust].” His mother’s sister had been staying in a shack in Thembelihle where she was also employed and identified a job for her as a domestic worker. Sibi’s mother sent back remittances each month to his grandmother so that she could raise him.39 In 2000, at the age of six, he moved in with his mother who was able to erect her own shack on a vacant stand in Thembelihle. At that time, enrolling in one of the nearby schools, Zodiak Primary, which was historically populated by Indian pupils, was not straightforward. Thembelihleans such as Sibi were consistently denied access to Lenasia’s schools which were dominated by the Indian population. In 2003, in fact, the tcc contacted the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (cals) for assistance in this regard. According to a report by cals, hundreds of learners from Thembelihe who registered for schools in the area were rejected annually suggesting discrimination on the basis of race and socio-economic status, in which mainly poor Black students from Thembelihle were systemically excluded and discriminated against at the schools if they were able to get in. The report concluded that “In the majority of cases where learners are turned away, the reasons for denial of access, and the procedures involved in excluding these learners, were in flagrant violation of the law.”40 Prior to cals’ involvement, the tcc worked closely with the apf umbrella organization, which assisted Sibi’s mother in obtaining a spot

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for him. Outside of school, he played soccer in a cleared dirt space which is set adjacent to where the tcc held its regular meetings: What made me to be politically active was [the fact that] tcc used to hold their meetings where we used to play here where there is a small sport field ground. So they used to have their meetings here so I was keep[ing] on wondering every Saturday: who are these people? Why are they sitting here? Then one of the Saturdays I went there still at a young age. I listened to what they were talking about then. I heard that they were talking about the same interests [that I have as a resident of Thembelihle].41 By the time he was ten years old, Sibi was active in local politics and soon thereafter he was personally campaigning for the okm councillor in the 2006 local government elections. “I was young and energetic at that time,” he recalled. He joined the adult members of the okm in putting up posters of Bhayiza. Sibi had a positive, empowering experience: “People did not undermine me to say, ‘hey, you are still a kid, what do you know?’ They gave me a chance to express myself,” he explained, “and to put my views as well.”42 Unlike the bourgeois political parties which could spend a great deal in order to prop up their candidates, the okm had virtually no funding. They relied upon small donations and business sponsors from the surrounding communities. He painted a picture of the politics put forth by the okm at one of the meetings he attended leading up to the elections: I was one of them campaigning for comrade Bhayiza so I remember one of the days we took comrade Bhayiza to Park Station because we had something called a pledge where we held our councillors accountable. We do not want councillors who after being voted into power [and then] they can just move to somewhere [and forget us]. So we went to Park Station which is called People’s Parliament these days and then he read out the pledge to [the] community … and then it was very clear you [as an okm councillor] should get a living wage, you are not there as a career[ist] but you are there to serve the interest of the community and people [at the meeting] were like, “yes! This is what we want.”43 In an attempt to gain further support for their socialist electoral politics, Bhayiza told the mass meeting, “If I am a councillor, I am promising

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that I will not relocate [to a middle-class area], I will stay where I am staying.” He further committed to turning his salary over to the okm: “It should go to the organization’s account then the organization will determine for me how much I should get.”44 The relationship between education institutions and the Thembelihle community has been highly contested since learners started to flood into the settlement in the early 1990s. Azara, the nearby high school, had developed a reputation for excluding Blacks from enrolling and also mistreating them. One of the Indian principals was notorious in this regard. Sibi remembered that in about 2008, when he was in grade nine, “that principal, when our parents came to school he would try to act nice and say we are not listening … [he] believed that he is the boss of the school, he can do whatever he likes at any time.”45 Even his own teachers feared him. The parents were confused as the children reported problems with the administration, while the principal blamed the students for lacking discipline. This was a long-standing acute problem with the specific leadership, but thus far the students’ concerns had fallen upon deaf ears. The “boss” at the helm of the school refused to change his ways. The tcc had witnessed this happen in their community on many occasions: after all, at the most basic level, if the community had listened to the powers-that-be, in 2002, they would no longer be residents of Thembelihle. The students, alongside the disciplined, strategic, and persistent tcc, again went through the formal, institutional processes. This time they targeted the school governing board (sgb) with letters, phone calls, and emails, but to little effect. Through working closely with the emerging cadre, attending regular meetings, and seeing the process through which popular mobilization from below could make a difference in people’s lives, Sibi began to conscientize other learners. He told them, “No there is a way guys. This is the only way to go because we have reported our issue to the sgb and … sgb had power to fire this principal.”46 After substantial planning by the learners and the tcc, the community alongside the learners staged a mass demonstration and stay-away from school: it was effectively shut down. As had become the usual practice within and beyond the locality, popular mobilization led to intervention by law enforcement. Sibi was brought to the Lenasia Police Station where he was asked who organized the protest. The administrators and police were unable to conceive of a situation in which students in high school could take their own matters and destinies into their own hands, and so they blamed the pupil’s parents. The students knew what they wanted,

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that they were indeed in the right, and power appeared to shift in their favour: their determination could not be shaken. With the community at their side, they constituted a potent force and created a new crisis which needed resolution. The tcc intervened and its leaders, alongside the anc councillor of the ward at the time, Dan Bovu, began negotiating with the Department of Education on the students’ behalf. They told the officials that the students “are sick and tired of this principal. He must go.”47 At first they were hesitant, but when students began to collect signatures of students who agreed that the principal must step down, they conceded. In fact, the popular will against the principal led him to step down: “The principal just resigned on his own.”48 Key leaders within the student population merged with the politics of the tcc. Basic human rights, services, healthcare, education, water, and electricity, in the minds of activists, belonged to them. But these rights would not be bestowed upon the working class. To obtain them, they needed to unite with other forces in order to avoid being isolated and crushed, and then proceed to fight as Sibi and his comrades demonstrated time and time again. Obtaining nearby education opportunities for the settlement’s children has been and continues to remain a key site of struggle and contestation for parents, children, and the broader community more generally. But by the late 2000s the need for electricity, especially in the cold of winter, took centre stage. The next section provides context for the electricity crisis which would culminate in 2011 in what was then the longest, most militant, demonstration since thousands of residents defended themselves against forced evictions. Key leaders of the okm stroke tcc in the community would be targeted by the police in the lead up to the 2011 local government elections in the country. The historical development of the electricity crisis therefore offers insight into the relationship between popular resistance and local political parties (particularly the anc and okm) within the community.

the people’s connection The community had, throughout the 2000s, submitted memorandums and held various kinds of protests and demonstrations addressed to government officials at different levels as a means by which to obtain in situ upgrading: mainly housing, water, and sanitation as well as education. Most important, perhaps, was the question of electricity since without this one can freeze during winter; it is impossible to store food (making it

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more expensive since one cannot buy in bulk); and students cannot read and write at night. But by the late 2000s, the community still lived in shacks without it. Some of the leading activists concluded that something must be urgently done about the underlying processes that led to this atrocious, socially constructed, condition – and so, as we shall see, a renewed form of direct action, an occupation, was deemed the most practical way to resolve the crisis. People literally died due to the use of paraffin stoves and candles. One activist spoke passionately and with a deep sense of regret about how two kids and their father did not survive a shack fire, one of many which have decimated crowded shack settlements across the country including Khayelitsha in Cape Town. Instead of flicking the light switch, they lit a match to see. Many nights went by without an incident in Thembelihle, but eventually the numbers strike no matter how careful one is. One activist recalled a situation which he aptly described as “brutal … they were sleeping, the candle fell and they perished. The three of them died in that shack.”49 Something had to be done. Inhumane experiences and social spaces in which death from not having access to basic services has become normalized, inevitably require creative tactics that extend beyond the boundaries of what is normally expected in a neoliberal or market-oriented and individualistic society. Another resident who came from a rural area in North West province had also become accustomed to electricity until he moved to Thembelihle, where his mother had moved when she found employment as a domestic worker in the surrounding Lenasia: “Coming here now [in Thembelihle] we have to use [the] primus stove thereby catching flu and other diseases from the smoke of paraffin and you have to use a candle and [to] do all other things.”50 These stoves are used by about three million South Africans and are especially prevalent in communities that do not have access to electricity.51 There had been roughly 5,000 reports of fire each year between 2009 and 2012. The most dangerous combination, one used in Thembelihle, is when paraffin is also used alongside candles.52 One male resident, who preferred not to be named, and who I will call Nathi, had been a long-standing resident of Thembelihle since the 1990s. He was not an integral part or member of the tcc, but like many others occasionally took part in protests and also did not have access to electricity. At that time, in the late 2000s, “Only [relatively] few people were connected to the grids [illegally or informally] and it was easy for City Power [the City’s electricity distributor] to just disconnect everyone.”53 He was part of the process through which, in 2010, the community decided to

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undertake more formal connection to the electricity grids on the outer edges of the settlement: “That is when we were seated under the tree [and] we decided as tcc, that we need electricity, let us call okm [in Soweto], to teach our comrades how to connect. Then we will now connect almost everyone. I remember [also] at the mass meeting talking about this and introducing these guys [from the secc] and then we told them on this particular day we want to start connecting.”54 The 2010 Soccer World Cup provided further impetus as another informal settlement at the nearby edge of Soweto, called Protea South, had recently connected through the assistance of the secc. While international visitors were planning their first trip to South Africa’s “rainbow nation,” members of the secc came to Thembelihle, to one of the tcc meetings, as they had on many occasions, this time requesting that they take advantage of the emerging opportunity. They were asked, “How about you guys go there in Protea South, they will teach you guys how to connect?” The tcc agreed: Look … World Cup was coming to South Africa, we have to watch Bafana Bafana playing and also watch other countries playing. So we did not have a choice by that time. We wanted to be part of South Africa. We did not want to live in isolation so we said, “no look, the best way to watch this World Cup, let us connect ourselves [informally].” So we started identifying transformers around [the borders of] our community.55 The resident further explained that the cost of living was increasing so using generators and buying expensive batteries for them was not a viable option. And so residents took matters into their own hands: “People began to form their street committees. Each street donated to buy a cable, then they call us [those who had been taught] … to connect.”56 One specific shack, headed by a woman who was a member of the anc, was electrified first. She had volunteered. The tcc, alongside the community, bought two-metre-long cables and began the process – with the support of the secc – of connecting the nearby households. Pits were dug and enough wire was linked to the main poles so that it could pass from yard to yard. The informality and the very nature of the settlement is never static or homogeneous. It changes over time through residents’ own ingenuity. In line with their constitution which calls for free or affordable basic services for all, they called this form of electrification “People’s Connection.” For a few years before, residents had relatively haphazard electricity connections, but now a seemingly better version was in progress:

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What will happen was that each and every section they will contribute and buy this cable so they will wait for the team to come and connect of which I was part of. So everyone will wait for our teams so we divided ourselves to be like “you guys go to F, D, and N sections.” At the end we would meet and write down who were connected. Then obviously when all this was going on it was like a project then some people started to connect for themselves without being part of tcc and they did not know how to do it they will mix live plus live wire and people were burnt. Then we called them and said “Guys let us be one and we will teach you how to connect. Do not just connect you must know which wire to connect to, sometimes you connect two live wires and it will burn people’s stuff in the house.”57 A thirty-six-year-old resident by the name of Benjamin Kulube was among those who decided to take matters into their own hands, but this practice also brought a new set of risks: We need electricity for almost everything that we do, how were we to survive without it? After years of living without electricity, we decided to make other means to get it. There’s the panic of my children’s safety all the time [because of the live wires that the community installed] but we need electricity. My wife and I also take precautions and try to make the house as safe as possible. I didn’t have to pay anyone to connect for me. I just bought a wire and connected it to the other connections around me. We use the electricity for small appliances like the radio, iron and to charge our phones.58 Within the collective struggle for improved living conditions in the settlement, individuals and households could make autonomous decisions based upon their own assessments of the precarious situations in which they found themselves. For many, the need for electricity on a daily basis outweighed the potential costs of live wires. A twenty-four-year-old unemployed woman named Zodwa Sithole confirmed that “not everyone in the informal settlement is connected to the illegal connections, because of the dangers involved. We’ve had people die over the years as the cables and wires connecting the electricity were out in the open and people would step on them, especially children when they were playing.” She lamented, “We know it’s dangerous, but we need electricity. We lived without it for too long.”59 And so, on the one hand, residents had developed relatively stable connections to electric power and could even stay warm at night without the

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need to make fires in their shacks, but, on the other, this new technique of the “People’s Connection” also brought further dangers because of the live wires. On the eve of the 2011 local government elections, which pitted the local anc and the tcc (stroke okm) against each other, this crisis emerged forcefully yet again. One resident, Janice Ndarala (referred to below as Janice), was at the forefront of this contestation given her emerging role in the local anc structures at the time.

“this child was not supposed to die” Lack of access to adequate water and sanitation have been daily features in the lives of Thembelihleans since individuals and families have occupied the area at various times over the past thirty years. Out of these lived experiences emerged the need for action: this created the conditions in which different kinds of political leadership would emerge. Among the most influential of these has been Janice – a vibrant local community activist – who was born on 10 June 1979 in Baragwanath hospital in Soweto. Her family moved to Mpumalanga where she attended primary school and then back to the southwest of Johannesburg, this time to Thembelihle, when she was thirteen years old, in about 1992. Her parents, according to her recollection, “wanted a new start.” They set up a shack on their own plot, creating a sense of independence, but it was not easy for her to adjust to the new environment: “For me it was a struggle. I do not want to lie to you. Because first of all I was not used to going to fetch water using the buckets, there were no taps [in the yards], it was only communal taps. Number one we were supposed to go from home and fetch water from the communal taps. The second struggle was that I was used to having electricity and by then we were supposed to use candles.”60 Studying in particular brought her new challenges because, unlike in her previous homes where they would simply turn the switch for power, she was required to do her homework in the shadows of a flickering candle. Her new shack in Thembelihle also did not have a refrigerator, which meant that her family could not store food for extended periods of time. “My parents did not understand,” she reflected as we sat outside on a pleasant winter afternoon in the shade of her Lehae home. Speaking out, standing up, and complaining about her desire for some of the very basic necessities in life, they had somehow thought she carried with her a sense of neediness or entitlement. But what made Janice and undoubtedly other residents more uncomfortable (and which was also a health hazard), is the fact that they had to use pit toilets: “There was no sanitation. I think that

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was what I hated the most.”61 Another concern she had was the fact that Thembelihle – which lacked formal recognition by the state and local government – had no method through which to dispose of its refuse: “Filthiness … I can say Thembelihle is a very nice place [to live independently] but it is also disadvantaged because there are not bins, there were not even the big bins to put the dumps [of garbage]. So we have to make dumping areas to dump. For me as a person it was sickening because you can get sick from those dumping[s], children can go and play there as well … just imagine [that] your child is going to play there.”62 During the summer months, the corrugated iron shacks absorb heat and trap it inside as there are seldom many, if any, windows (other than the main door) for ventilation. But the winter months are even more dreaded since the cold seeps in through the thin sheets of metal and crevices between them. The difference between the cold wind outside and the temperature inside the home can be negligible. If it is nearly freezing outside, one then nearly freezes inside. With no electricity or other conventional means by which to heat the home, residents use imbawula. An isiZulu term for “the fire” in English, it is in practice a combination of coal and wood which is placed in an oven or tin that is connected to a makeshift pipe that leads out the top of the shack so that smoke can escape. It is not uncommon for fires to result from this method of keeping warm during the winter in a shack settlement. Janice was not the type of person who would sit back, look away, or wait during an emergency. Instead, she was proactive: “If they call me and say there is a fire somewhere, I wanted to go and see what I can do while calling the firefighters to come. I want to be there to help.” On one occasion she rushed swiftly over to a nearby shack to help, but it was too late: the young woman witnessed a four-year-old child burning to death. This motivated her further to do something to proactively resolve the grave problem. Janice did not mince words when she reflected: “That is what forced me more than anything to say we really need electricity because this child was not supposed to die.” She further confirmed that the use of paraffin and candles also led to fires: “So there were a lot of shacks which were burnt down due to those things. Not only the shacks burning down but we also lost lives. I had to witness two shacks burning down and there were two people in there: it was a girlfriend and a boyfriend. They were burnt to death because they were not able to open the door, it was like havoc … seeing people dying like that [obviously] is not nice. Also people [were] losing their little [meagre] belongings that they have.”63 When she was sixteen years old in the mid-1990s. the country was tran-

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sitioning to the celebrated new democratic era and Janice was interested in fashion and modelling. Her friends, Vusi and Macia, organized live public events including a regular pageant called Miss Thembelihle. There was no youth branch of the anc in the settlement at that time but it was nevertheless the young members of the party who approached her. According to her own account she was a talkative person, and they said, “This girl, I think she will be fine in politics.” They recruited her and she joined. By the end of the 1990s and into the year 2000, Janice and her friends formed their own Youth League structure. They were part of a dual strategic process in which they both challenged and worked closely with anc councillor Dan Bovu: By then there was no Youth [League], but I said, “It cannot be [a situation in which] us youngsters [are always] combined with adults.” So, we created a group, me and my friends, the anc Youth League [ancyl]. We made a little bit of havoc because we were giving our councillor stress to be honest (laughing). But not in a wrong way but in a sense of we wanted electricity, water sanitation, and all of those things. In that sense, you know? We also bothered him [the councillor] when we needed bursaries for schools and all of that because there are a lot of youngsters who finished their matric with good grades, but, unfortunately, they could not continue because of financial reasons.64 Janice did not talk behind people’s backs and she confronted the settlement’s concerns head on without letting fear get the best of her. If she had deduced that an incorrect approach was being applied in relation to development or upliftment of the community, she voiced her concern and attempted to find a solution collectively, with others. Due to health problems Janice was having, she was forced to drop out of school. She thought at the time that “the best thing that I can do is to help my community.” When she was about to turn twenty, the young woman enrolled in Emergency Medical Services (ems) between 1998 and 2000. The trauma from the accidents that she witnessed was too much for her: blood, knife wounds, and others. She could no longer take it and instead found a new job at Thembelihle Clinic where she was based for a decade as a counsellor for tuberculosis and hiv/aids patients.65 Eventually, however, her true passion shone through: “I was an activist in politics, I love politics.” Members of the local anc came to her before the 2011 local government elections and told her: “You know what you

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are doing for your community [is impressive], we think that you will be a capable councillor.”66 Janice agreed, thus turning the tables of local politics in the community. Instead of applying pressure on local authorities and negotiating, she would soon bear the brunt of a community which had grown weary of waiting patiently for few or no tangible results. Elected on an anc ticket as ward councillor and representative of the community, she began to adapt to the party’s ideological framing: one that suggests that people must not force their way through.

accessing the state: elected officials and popular politics While in power, the anc has used its liberation credentials in order to suggest that any development process it undertakes is legitimate regardless of what communities say. As anc councillor in the area, Janice became part of this machinery, which was based on the premise that in Thembelihle, as elsewhere, they can protest all they want, but in the end the people of Thembelihle must wait their turn. For the tcc, positive changes in residents’ lives would only come through popular protest and engagement with the People’s Parliament. These conflicting frameworks brought her personally into disagreement with the militancy of residents as well as the prevailing leadership of the tcc and therefore also the okm. Though both sides evidently wanted electricity, the means and process by which this should be obtained was fundamentally different. Since the popular mobilization fuelled in part by the tcc led to the removal of the local anc councillor, Dan Bovu, in 2002, the relationship between the two organizations had been filled with tension. While the tcc had retained legitimacy as a genuine representative of the community’s grievances, the anc had nevertheless also retained a major electoral edge with each local government councillor in the ward having won under the ticket of the ruling party. In the lead up to the May 2011 elections, Thembelihle’s popular unrest around the issue of electricity was coming to a head, and throughout the year activists on the okm ticket (Zwane and Bhayiza) were consistently targeted by the state and each arrested for several weeks. The okm contested the elections in 2011, standing Bhayiza Miya who came in third with a modest total of 450 votes in the ward in which Thembelihle is located. According to the Independent Electoral Commission (iec) of South Africa, Janice won 3,657 of 6,968 votes in the ward, which is approximately 52 per cent of the votes.67 The anc demonstrated that it could maintain electoral dominance, but the tcc, alongside its electoral

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4.2 Protestors commemorating “youth day.” Bhayiza Moses Miya attends a “youth day” march outside Morris Issacson high school in Soweto on 16 June 2011 to commemorate the uprisings. An outstanding spokesperson for the working class and poor, Bhayiza stood as the local candidate for elections beginning in 2006. He came to Thembelihle in 1995 with much hope and on the back of the anc’s honeymoon period, only to have his teeth smashed out by a rubber bullet when he attended his first protest in the democratic period in 2002.

front the okm, clearly still retained far deeper roots among the rank-andfile community members in Thembelihle who had hope for a better tomorrow. Zwane (introduced in the previous chapter in detail) also became a pr councillor for the okm, which had secured enough votes in Johannesburg (mostly from Soweto and the secc’s membership and tcc’s) to obtain one seat in local government. Nearly a decade had passed since the Red Ants had come, confidently, to evict the people of Thembelihle. While residents successfully prevented the imminent evictions, the future of the settlement still was unclear: the ruling anc, for its part, remained steadfast in its refusal to provide basic services for the community. The government’s provincial leadership would not budge, retaining a vision that Thembelihle was but a temporary problem to be annihilated. In the lead up to the May local govern-

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ment elections in 2011, the community sought to defend its own alternative vision. The community wanted in situ upgrading and formalized electricity connections and infrastructure. Most residents now had “people’s connections” to the surrounding poles which meant that candles ceased to be the major threat for burning shacks down. The electricity, however, brought new crises: “We connected ourselves. But the very same connections it was killing innocent kids, people were dying, we lost people.” The residents told each other “let us march and demand proper electricity because the very same illegal connections it is killing our people.”68 Boardroom negotiations with local government continued to be fruitless in the eyes of many residents who witnessed no progress. The tcc for its part remained steadfast. On 17 February 2011, the tcc submitted a memorandum to the City of Johannesburg Region G which said: As members of the Thembelihle community we are concerned regarding the situation that we are compelled to continue to live under only because of our social status in society, and we believe this is an unfair discrimination of its kind. All the previous local and general elections have seen thousands of members of this community throwing weight behind the African National Congress (anc) with the hope that our lives would be changed for the better in line with their slogan “A better life for all.” All that we have seen thus far is the stagnant [practices] in the trap of underdevelopment of the majority and the empowerment of a tiny minority connected to the politically influential from the ruling party.69 The evocative memorandum indicated that “We [residents] are in the dark with our fate regarding the future of Thembelihle in general as a community as we always dream of it becoming a properly developed township – a dream that we hope to see come true.”70 Notably, Janice, who was then the chairperson of the ancyl, attended the march, presumably also because she hoped that it would help bring the changes that she had sought since moving to Thembelihle in the early 1990s. However, soon after Janice was elected as ward councillor on 18 May 2011, the relationship between the tcc and anc “soured.”71 The city did not respond for the greater part of a year. The stakes, of course, were higher, as Janice was closer than ever to the levers of state power. On Monday 6 June 2011, a meeting was supposed to take place between leaders of the tcc and Janice, but it did not. A project began in 2009 which was intended to construct 3,400 toilets to service the yards in Thembelihle. It stalled

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in 2010, and, the following year, residents understandably proceeded to complain about the relationship between lack of electricity and the outside pit latrines. Authorities and those contracted, “came and said they would build toilets for all here … but all they did was leave behind these open pits, and these pose a great danger to the children around here, to all of us in fact, especially at night when we cannot see so clearly.”72 By Thursday, 9 June 2011, residents took to the streets barricading the surrounding K-43 street, which is a strategic way to block people from getting to work. Kay Makhubela, a spokesperson for the South African Police Service reported, however, that everything was “under control,” that no one was injured and no arrests had been made.73 According to Janice’s account, within two weeks of her induction as a ward councillor, “They welcomed me with a protest.”74 But these were a mere bump in the road for the local anc compared to what was to follow. When the tcc reported back the lack of progress that the government made in providing electricity, the People’s Parliament decided that the community had been ignored long enough. Ongoing negotiations and the submission of memorandums at organized marches to authorities seemed to be in vain. It was time to escalate the struggle from demonstrations to an all-out occupation.

from demonstration to occupation: arresting the okm On 5 September, early in the morning, the community barricaded the roads. The People’s Parliament, rooted in the direct experience of the dispossessed of Thembelihle, would again become the engine of direct democracy. They would attempt to access power on their own terms by forcing authorities to the negotiating table. Burned tires and cartridges of rubber bullets could be seen strewn about the streets following the first day of the protests: it was not only leading activists at the forefront who were victims of police brutality that day nor was it confined to the adult population. A boy from the settlement who was eleven years old appeared on camera with the media. He was holding no weapon, was not even part of the protest, and the police did not utter a word when they arrived outside his home. His only crime? Living in Thembelihle. He must have been traumatized, with one side of his face covered almost completely by a large white bandage, but he didn’t seem to flinch when relaying the events: “I was washing the dishes. And then I heard the people screaming. And then the hippo [a large police vehicle] come[s] in my street and then I was in the yard. I come outside and then they shoot me, [they] stop and shoot.”75

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A young woman was also whacked in the face: luckily the bullet missed her left eye, so her vision was probably not severely affected. She left the scene appearing as if she had been battered and bruised by an intimate partner. In fact, however, it was the work of an abusive and uncaring state. One woman reflected that this had been a long outstanding issue: “I have been living here in [the] squatter camp thirty-three years. We don’t have service. We don’t have electricity. Since we start by toyi-toying [protesting] yesterday, the whole night we are toyi-toying because we want what? Electricity, water, toilet.”76 The community was not silent. A young man told the cameras which arrived on that day, “You know these people they have been promising us for a long time. We want gas, electricity, we want to be like anyone else.” Another with pierced ears and a small afro put his view on that same day: “The police. They were shooting at us. We didn’t do anything. The only thing that we are fighting for is for electricity and improvement [of the community]. But they come here and they shoot at us.”77 The demonstrators sought to upscale their protest, indicating that the unrest would go forward until leaders of the anc came to their settlement. They specifically requested the vocal and articulate Julius Malema, then president of the anc Youth League, or then President Jacob Zuma. On the second day of the protest on Tuesday, 6 September 2011, the state sent anc officials in an attempt to quell the resistance. Across the road from a settlement, next to the k-43 traffic lights, stands a large tree next to an open space where meetings are occasionally held. Two thousand residents swelled the meeting as it was promised that the anc member and mec Humphrey Mmemezi would address their grievances. However, Mmemezi was still of the view that Thembelihleans should be relocated to Lehae since, he argued, the land was dolomitic. It was as if the anc official was deaf to the voices and complaints which had emerged from the settlement. According to one resident’s recollection of the events: He came and he brought a lot of chairs with him for us to sit down and listen to them talking rubbish. In fact, he did not say anything and I was very close to them. I was standing on the hippo [large police vehicle] with Bhayiza, then Humphrey said, “Thembelihle will be moved, there is nothing that will be done here.” People started throwing stones at them and the police started shooting at us and almost all those chairs were burnt in the roads, they [residents] put tyres on them [and they set them alight].78

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There was now a deadlock. Mmemezi was heard on the radio later that night exclaiming that the government would “deal” with the protestors if the unrest continued.79 In the coming days, the state’s response intensified, but not through peaceful negotiations between government officials and community representatives. More police were sent. Residents ran for cover. According to Mbatha, I was shot at when we were at the robots [traffic lights]. They [police] were like, “Do not come this side of the road. Just remain where you are.” So we were standing there doing nothing but singing. There was a guy we know he normally sees us when there are protests, we have known him, so he was like, “Oh guys you have started again” and we responded and said, “Yes.” While I was talking to this guy and we were not fighting, the other guys from the Metro Police started shooting. So I turned, when I tried to run I failed because already I was shot, my knee skin went off and so I couldn’t run faster. I was limping going inside Thembelihle and I did not know that I was shot. Until someone said, “Hey what is wrong with your trousers? There is blood.” When I looked at it there was blood which was flowing.80 He took refuge at his cousin’s house. He sat down, bent his head down towards his legs, and saw a hole in his knee. When he lifted the skin of the fresh wound, there was a sponge, a brown bullet inside and his bone was visible. He needed treatment but thought it wise not to head straight to a hospital, being a public place. Mbatha was a beneficiary of a situation in which Thembelihleans use their own learned skills to provide free basic services to each other – from electricity to, now, direct medical assistance. “Then I went to another house,” he recalled, “the lady there was a nurse then she cleaned my wound.” The following day he went to the hospital where he found a friend of his who had also been shot by the police. They were stitched up and travelled back together from the hospital to the ongoing political unrest in Thembelihle, which was beginning to settle. But the infliction of police violence did not stunt Mbatha’s activism.81 Instead, like his neighbour who was shot nearly a decade earlier, it further conscientized him: “I mean like then I was beginning to understand the system and then when I was shot obviously, it developed to me to say that we are still in the apartheid [system]. It was like we were shot for fun, it was like when Bhayiza was shot I was next to him [and saw his teeth blown out].”82 A significant portion of community members were arrested that evening and on 7 September, the third day of the occupation, res-

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idents marched to Protea Regional Court to demand the release of thirteen arrested comrades. The tcc had notified the police, as per the Regulation of Gatherings Act, and the following day about fifty protestors did the same. Nomvula Mokonyane, the Gauteng premier arguably fanned the fire: “You must know that when they [the police] are provoked they may go to extremes. We will not tolerate anarchy and unruly protestors.”83 But the looting and burning of nearby shops had now become a key feature that the police used to continue to “clamp-down.”84 Lucky Nxumalo reported in City Press that there was R1.5 million damage due to electricity cables being stolen and electricity boxes burned, allegedly by protestors. At least one minor, a girl, “was trampled by fleeing protestors.”85 Conflict between the mostly Black informal settlement and the surrounding community inevitably results during this type of large-scale protest action. Those living in formal housing fear the underserviced informal settlement across the road: “We are a bit afraid at the moment because we don’t know what’s gonna come up next.” Another person from the surrounding suburb revealed a strong sense of insecurity: “They threaten us. They said that they are going to come and burn our houses down.”86 As had been traditionally the case in the settlement, the progressive leaders of the tcc and okm tended to distance themselves from these acts, viewing them as distractions from the real cause of improving people’s lives. Bhayiza in particular, according to Clark who undertook extensive research specifically on this item, was not part of “the sporadic eruptions of violence that continue to take place at the settlement, as criminal elements are increasingly taking advantage of the protest.”87 Not only that but he appeared to be “instrumental” in preventing community members from partaking in violent activities.88 Nevertheless, Bhayiza was specifically targeted by the police and arrested on charges of public violence and intimidation on 13 September 2011. Two days later the occupation receded. One resident reflected on the situation at hand when he said they were “aware that police have a list of people perceived to be leaders in the protest who they want to arrest.”89 There is a tendency to victimize leaders, to discipline them through imprisonment and long, drawn out cases. Bhayiza remained in jail for more than one month until the case was finally struck from the roll on 20 October 2011 due to lack of evidence. While Bhayiza had stood as the local ward councillor, Zwane, the elected pr councillor who lived in Thembelihle, was the next politicized target. It is no coincidence that upon the release of Bhayiza, literally the following day, she was arrested at her place of residence. An okm press statement

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deduced that this was evidence “that the organs of state security and justice are being used to supress the struggles of working-class communities.”90 Zwane was allegedly being targeted by the anc for reading and handing a memorandum over to Janice, the anc ward councillor in the area, on 22 August. According to the okm statement, “The state is using arrests and the courts to frustrate the struggle of the Thembelihle community by victimizing its leaders. The aim is to undermine the search for political alternatives to anc capitalist rule.”91 Zwane was released, and the police interventions ceased momentarily, but the struggle to improve the lives of the people of Thembelihle, to participate in determining development priorities, did not disappear. Another march was held by the tcc in 2012, which led to the government conceding that there would be further investigations regarding whether or not the settlement could indeed be upgraded.

from thembelihle to marikana: linking to the “numsa moment” The tcc leadership and other residents have consistently attempted to scale up their activism. While they attempt to participate in local government decision-making processes, they also build networks and provide solidarity elsewhere. Since the police killed thirty-four mineworkers at Marikana platinum mine in 2012, fundamental political shifts have occurred in South Africa, opening up spaces on the left of the tripartite alliance made up of the anc, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (cosatu) and the South African Communist Party (sacp). This has included the emergence of the Economic Freedom Fighters (eff) and the so-called numsa moment, when the largest trade union in the country broke from the alliance in 2013 and began the process of forming a united front to challenge the adoption of neoliberal, capitalist, and anti-workingclass policies by the ruling anc. Thembelihle activists were initially, and remain, at the forefront of this configuration. They had been knocking at the doors of trade unions for many years, and finally numsa opened space for them to come through. They joined the Gauteng Strike Support Committee (gssc) to provide much needed support for mineworkers who were on an unprotected strike (the longest strike in South African mining history), but before this they offered direct physical solidarity to the mineworkers who were victimized during the strike in 2012. Indeed, about 3,000 people were on the mountain at Marikana when police killed thirty-four and injured and arrested 271 others.

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On 16 August 2012, televisions all over the country showed a group of strikers being slaughtered with automatic weapons. State and media misrepresentation widely accepted by the public at the time suggested that the mineworkers were mob-like and that the police were simply defending themselves from a militant and dangerous group of mineworkers – a theme that also runs through the state’s Marikana Judicial Commission of Inquiry. Others at the time, including activists involved in the tcc, thought otherwise. This was a strike: the workers of Marikana were fighting for their rights. The community of Thembelihle, like Marikana, also had been victims of police brutality. Over the years, they have offered solidarity to Zimbabweans and also at the US Consulate in Sandton where a group of protestors demonstrated as part of the #BlackLivesMatter movement as well as against countless instances of police brutality in South Africa. It so happened that on 16 August 2012, when the killings took place, dozens of civic leaders from around the country were meeting in Magaliesburg (which is just a one-hour drive away from Marikana) at a Democratic Left Front (dlf) meeting. The dlf was a national anti-capitalist umbrella organization which essentially succeeded the apf when it declined in the late 2000s. Activists were attending a political youth camp. As per the dlf’s mandate, discussions were centred around building an anti-capitalist alternative rooted in pre-existing grassroots structures. tcc leaders, including Zwane, were present. The group discussed what was happening and how they should respond given the intensity of the situation and the fact that people had just died while on strike at Lonmin. They noted that this was the third largest platinum mine in the world. While one activist who was present at the camp indicated that it was too dangerous to go, others thought they should find out what really happened. Instead of looking inwards to their own community problems, they looked outwards towards the broader working class. Zwane remembered, “We [then] agree that we are in the struggle [together so] we need to go there, show our support to them and our solidarity to workers. So, we selected some comrades.”92 Activists were drawn from different corners of the country so that those who made the visit would be geographically representative, and the following morning, which was Friday, 17 August, they made their way to Marikana. Zwane and the others did not know what to expect. The immediate aftermath of what was later described as a massacre must have seemed like a nightmare: “The first thing when we go there it was blood stains [that we personally saw]. I even saw a skull of a person lying there next to the kraal [where workers had run for refuge]. It was so sad. The

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workers were starting to gather around [us] when we reached there. They started shouting.”93 It was a male-dominated space permeated by a sense of workers’ power. These were mineworkers who undertake the daily arduous task of digging platinum from the bowels of the earth for a living and who were, heroically, still on strike despite the killings. They did not want their slain colleagues to have died in vain. Zwane was with a white man from the dlf named Martin Legassick; the workers asked without any hesitation, “Where is this white man going?” The new-comers, in their boldness, were told to take off their hats. The women, including Zwane, were asked to move to one side, in a line, and the men the other. Being undermined by this form of direct discrimination did not prevent her from practicing her activism: “If I remember clearly, I was the first woman to stand in front of them and address them because they did not want anything to do with a woman. But at the end they understood and listened to us as dlf and then we pledged our solidarity.”94 Arriving back home, Zwane and others were able to report first-hand what they experienced. Attending a regular executive meeting Zwane remembered, “Even our tcc felt this.”95 Mbatha explained that their visits turned the community perceptions of what had happened in Marikana on its head: “Coming from the area [Marikana] itself, when we went back home, obviously, we had to explain to people to say what they have heard and what we have seen it is not the same, you know? When we analyse it, we saw that those are our brothers and fathers who have been killed there.”96 The two activists, as well as the tcc, were deeply embedded within the community, and trusted, and they began to develop a common sense of what had just transpired. The matter was taken personally as individuals who had been in Marikana related a form of police brutality – state repression and arrests – more extreme than they had experienced while engaging in their own protests for service delivery: People were arrested there [in Marikana] like many of them. We have seen similar patterns that have been used to supress the community and workers’ struggle. Because leaders [in Thembelihle] could [also] be arrested not because they are wrong but because they are not allowed to fight for their rights. So we were like trying to show people what the [anc] government is doing. The working class is demanding what is rightfully theirs. So we [were] trying to make sense of what happened on a particular day because the workers did not have [the] luxury of media coverage to put their stories to the world.97

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In his own view, this was “our opportunity, we utilise it and tell the truth of what actually happened there because we know how the system works.” It did not take long for other activists who had already begun a broader process of conscientization about the relationship between grassroots resistance and state repression. Mbatha remembers being asked by concerned residents, “Is this what is going to happen to us tomorrow?”98 When they reported to the okm meeting, Zwane remembered that her monthly councillor’s salary, which went directly to the small political movement, would come in handy. It could be used to move comrades from their locality to other communities to offer solidarity. Marikana was about a two-hour drive from Thembelihle. Given that a significant portion of the tcc and okm were underemployed, or not working at all, this was necessary to subsidize the building of broader working-class alliances and created a means by which civic organizations could provide an alternative to ngoization – a popular practice in South Africa which describes a situation in which the political orientation of grassroots movements is determined by ngos and others who have access to funds. The okm’s policy, therefore, not only had the effect of paying its councillor a “living wage” and holding her directly accountable to her constituency but also meant that the okm (and therefore the secc and tcc) could fund its own program by transporting activists. Zwane recalled the discussion they had upon arriving back in Johannesburg: “Because we had something in our account, how about we take one taxi [a minibus carrying fifteen people] from Thembelihle and one from secc to go and give them [mineworkers] support?”99 Mass meetings were held by the tcc in order to explain to the community what had transpired in Marikana. In a sense, they became vanguards of an alternative history of Marikana, shaping the consciousness of residents. Sibusiso was at work when he saw, on tv , the mineworkers being brutalized: “I was listening to the news. I heard this bad story saying that people have been killed.”100 He recalls that the reporting created a picture of dangerous criminals intent on attacking the police. When the activists came back from Marikana to explain what happened through the lens of mineworkers who had been present on the mountain during the shootings, the story transformed. According to his own version of events: They [mineworkers] were doing nothing [violent or destructive] there. They were sitting on the mountain, not even in the offices of Lonmin. When the sun sets, they said “Let us go back to the house[s where we live], then we can decide tomorrow the way forward.” So, when people were leaving that thing [the mountain] that is where everything

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started. They [police] came with [a long and tall extension of] razor wire. They barricaded the whole place. They closed the whole place down. They closed the whole place with people inside and then they started shooting people. You could even see the way they were shooting people, they [police] were enjoying [themselves].101 A recurrent theme raised by many members of the tcc is: who are the real criminals? Sibusiso and others in the tcc asked themselves that question. They too, as an insurgent community, had been victimized by the state, arrested on occasion like those in Marikana. “When criminals are doing their things, they [police] do not do that … if they had to protect the community, they do not do that.”102 The police are not the first ones in Thembelihle when there is a crime or an emergency and there is not the same kind of heavy-handed response. From his perspective, the workers were killed for standing up and fighting for their rights: thirty-four were crucified on the mountain after having been sentenced to death. On seemingly countless occasions, Thembelihleans have organized and staged demonstrations, protests, occupations, blockades, and marches with the intention of forcing government and other authorities to the negotiating table: to participate in decision-making processes. More often than not, it was the police that were sent, not to negotiate, but to supress their dissent. It was not a far stretch for them to draw similarities between the two sets of experiences. After all, the mineworkers went on strike, withdrawing their labour power, occupying a mountain, and waiting for their employer until they were suppressed with the might of the police. The Marikana massacre was a turning point in the history of the country. It culminated in a historically momentous process wherein many had hope in the prospects for linking community and workplace struggles in order to build an anti-capitalist future outside the anc. As “an explicit, union-led attempt to overcome working-class fragmentation,” Paret has posed questions about the United Front, including, “[o]n what basis is it possible to forge unity [amongst] unionised workers, the casually employed and the unemployed? To what extent is each side interested in building common struggles”?103 The tcc clearly were and remain interested.

conclusion The socialist activists at the forefront of struggle in Thembelihle and beyond appear to literally do everything they possibly can: they have formed an electoral front rooted in grassroots struggles, built links to mil-

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itant workers, challenged xenophobia in their own community, provided solidarity to mineworkers who had been victimized by the state, and engage in regular and consistent democratic meetings of the People’s Parliament which have often culminated in occupations of the streets by residents. While the previous chapter indicated that the People’s Parliament is a system of democratic grassroots organization operating on its own terms, the people of Thembelihle have also formed state mechanisms through which to access substantive power beyond the dictates of the market. The okm is constituted “from below” by civic structures who hold its leadership accountable, but this also means that its activists are subject to the same forms of state repression as other militants. Combining different layers of organizational structures, the people of Thembelihle’s struggle to participate is rooted in radical notions of leadership accountability. The okm, informed by Marxist ideology, defines itself as a working class and socialist electoral front and it lives up to its name. The corporate logic of “good governance” has reinforced mainstream notions of epg which tend to be geared towards directing the costs of participation to ordinary people while also preventing class struggle from taking hold. Concessions may be used to quell dissent. This case appears to avoid pitfalls associated with participation because residents directly confront cost recovery and other effects of neoliberal policies which largely dictate what kinds of development are possible at a local level. Moreover, instead of rolling back popular mobilization (as happened with Syriza and Podemos on national scales), the okm’s signal objective is to build broad-scale working-class unity. Dynamics at the local level, as we shall see, nevertheless took centre stage arguably preventing the further articulation and “scaling-up” of a counter-hegemonic alternative. The next chapter details what happened when the “voices” of the people of Thembelihle were finally heard by the government. What are the political possibilities and limits which emerged when they appear to attain their objective of achieving a better life and a transformed, safe, and permanent space, with electricity and housing?

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5 Between Bottom-Up and Top-Down Development

What happens when the demands of grassroots militants are realized? To put it another way, what are the possibilities and limitations which emerge when their voice is heard by authorities and their interests inscribed in government policies? If “voice” is viewed as an end in itself then it is logical to conclude that they have participated in governance. But is this necessarily a reflection of substantive participatory democracy? The answers to these questions, as I have sought to demonstrate, depend to a significant extent upon one’s ideological vantage point. Indeed, Wendy Brown’s Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution highlights the subtle and often hidden processes through which the market controls nearly every aspect of our lives and has led to a social and ecological crisis. Democracy, rule by the people has been “stealthily” hollowed out.1 Indeed, Brown has suggested that “we are all democrats now” but cogently asks us to consider “what is left of democracy?”2 The argument presented in this book has suggested that meaningful participation is not possible under neoliberalism. Within this framework even “reformed” democracy that is shaped by militants remains “low intensity” to the extent that it is located within a context of a neoliberal, tokenwelfare state. This chapter demonstrates how after waging a nearly two-decade-long struggle, including a three-week-long occupation in 2015, the residents of Thembelihle finally got what they wanted: the right to upgrade and to formally electrify a relatively small piece of land where residents had made their homes. For a moment there was a celebration, but soon reality struck. While it is absolutely essential for activists to enter, shape, and exploit institutional processes, to fight for reforms within a neoliberal capitalist system, the danger is that this may lead to a cycle of perpetual par-

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ticipation. In the absence of a legitimate counter-power capable of responding to mass uprisings on a national scale, community activists are not only criminalized and abused by the state but their victories may become attributed to those so-called “participatory mendicants” or development saints,3 who maintain the very systems of oppression that they were fighting against. The anc effectively did an about-face, legitimizing a struggle that it had criminalized for many years within and beyond Thembelihle, which it was now electrifying. Without the sustained pressure by the community, however, it may never have taken place. The following section explores the negotiations between the tcc and state authorities (from mid-2014) before the former turned to a show of force: the nearly one-month long occupation of Thembelihle’s outer region by residents. This then leads to the core of the chapter which offers ethnographic detail on the lengths that individual activists go to to make changes in their community and beyond, to have their voices heard: their private lives become transformed as police repression and state brutality enters their bedrooms, traumatizes their families, and changes the prospects of their employability. One community member was shot dead during a scuffle while the occupation was underway. Before the state can send authorities to engage constructively, they send the police. While grassroots militants and aligned socialists appear to do everything they can possibly do, the local snare remains. Without a counter-power capable of linking disparate struggles, through no fault of their own, activists risk a reproduction of the very systems of subjugation that they fight against. The core of the chapter tells the story of those who fight at the margins of a neoliberal order which not only denies the right to housing, water, and electricity but subjects them to police and state repression for standing up for those very rights.

temperature rising Mass action by any community, in this case Thembelihle, never happens in a vacuum and therefore must be understood in its distinct social and historical context. The community, all the time living in impoverished conditions, had in fact shown patience as well as perseverance. Not only had the tcc been consistently engaging local government for more than a decade since its inception in 2001, it had, in consultation with the community in 2014 (prior to undertaking the road occupation of 2015, which is the subject of the next section), decided to elevate its demands to the provincial administration. As the organization’s secretary, Segodi, explained:

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All along we have been trying to engage with local government. And sometime in the middle of last year [2014], we concluded that we are constantly hitting the wall here, nothing is coming forth from the local government. Sometimes undertakings are made [by officials], but there’s nothing, we’ve seen no action afterwards … [In] 2014 we came to the conclusion that, no, let’s abandon our engagement with local government and elevate our matter to a higher authority, which is, we identified the Department of [what is] now called, Human Settlement from Housing, as our primary target.4 They sought to engage directly with a member of the executive committee (mec) from this department named Jacob Mamabolo. The call for Mamabolo to address the community would become a key feature of the struggle in the months to follow. Bhayiza hand-delivered a memorandum to Mamabolo’s office in mid-2014. They then obtained a signed and stamped letter from the department acknowledging the tcc’s request to meet with the mec. By October, however, the mec had made no effort to meet with the community representatives. The tcc, in consultation with the community, decided, “We need[ed] to take a further step, and a further step was that we need[ed] to march to the office of the mec now … We need[ed] some kind of mass mobilization to put weight to our call.” There was some discussion as to whether the residents would be able to obtain transport in order to march to the provincial offices of the mec, which were located twenty-five miles away in the centre of Johannesburg. It was decided that, because the tcc lacked the necessary resources to have a large number march in Johannesburg, residents would instead demonstrate at the municipal offices within walking distance, a mere half-mile from Thembelihle. The target, the mec, would nevertheless remain the same despite the destination. Two thousand people marched to the municipal offices on 16 October. According to one resident, “People have been marching for ages and nothing is coming … [so] we celebrated that kind of turnout as a success.”5 An official was sent from the mec’s office in place of Mamabolo to meet the residents and receive the memorandum, which was handed over and signed. It gave the mec seven days to respond to the residents. Segodi was appointed by the community as an official liaison, mandated to follow up by email. Before the end of the seven days, a representative from the Member of the Mayor Committee (mmc), Vulindlela Magebula, responded to confirm the receipt of the memorandum and further

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request that they be given an extension. However, the tcc refused to grant one on the basis that this was a delay tactic: So together with the community, we agreed that you know, these kind of responses we are used to them, it has become the modus operandi of … state functionaries or government institutions, to say, you know, “We need more time,” and then you give them more time, nothing still comes forth, so, [we] responded in line with the community’s response, that this response is unacceptable and [in reality] it’s a nonresponse because we were expecting that within seven days you’ll be telling us what you’ll be doing with the issues that we have raised … We as tcc said, “We can’t take this issue further. We want you guys to come down and make that pronouncement directly to the community. We want mec [Mamabolo] himself to come and make that pronouncement to the community.”6 In an attempt to prevent further action, Mamabolo himself went to Thembelihle at the end of October to address a mass meeting of the community. The mec promised a further meeting with community representatives, which was held the following week, on 4 November 2014. A number of promises were made by senior officials regarding issues of service delivery inside and outside of Thembelihle. Mamabolo agreed to report back to the community in December (before the holidays, when South Africans tend to take a break from work and spend time with their families), but he failed to do so. The tcc decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and continued to delay any further action. When January 2015 came, the residents of Thembelihle continued to show patience with the fact that the mec had broken his promises: “We opened as tcc, sat our [biweekly] meetings. And then … the time is moving but nothing … is coming forth. But it’s January. Maybe they are still putting their things together into place. Let’s see what will happen in February. We gave them another grace in January.”7 However, when mid-February came, a number of residents, including leaders of the tcc, starting saying to each other, “No. Now we can’t allow things to move beyond this. What are we doing, comrades? No, we need action.” It was agreed that the matter needed to be elevated to the mass meeting in order “to engage the community – to say, you know, all those promises that we came [back to the mass meeting] to report on here, don’t seem to be materialising.”8 A mass meeting was held on Sunday, 22 February 2015. The tcc reported back to the community about the officials’ apparent delay tac-

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tics and offered them a platform to express themselves. Members of the tcc, as was standard radically democratic practice, prompted the community to take their destiny into their own hands. “What is the next step? What should we do now?” those who called the meeting asked.9 A resident of the community whom I interviewed in June 2015 – the resident preferred to remain anonymous, but I will refer to him as “Themba” – said that community residents then reminded the tcc leaders of what an official had said late in the previous year to give them time, and “if they [the officials] don’t work with us [the community] or they don’t respond correctly, then we can go to the streets.” The majority of residents concluded, “We can’t wait any longer, these people are playing with us, are playing games now.”10 It became clear that protest action would take place until the appropriate officials responded to the community’s demands. This demonstration, however, was not to be registered with the police. Its militancy would be defined by the community’s desperation. Its objective would be to disturb the everyday experiences of people’s life in the area around Thembelihle – the middle-class suburb of Lenasia. Road blockades in particular would prevent people from going to work and even school, thus creating a crisis and attracting media attention. From the perspective of the state, it would be an illegal protest, which would require heavy police intervention. The question now was when the protest would start. Some residents argued that as soon as the mass meeting ended that afternoon, they must begin. The majority concluded that people should wake up early in the morning, in the darkness, on the following day, gather numbers, and then occupy the streets. According to Themba, “That was a decision that was made by the community, and then we as [the] tcc have to do what the community tells us to do.”11

thembelihle burning After the mass meeting on Sunday, 22 February 2015, the tcc held its own caucus to discuss how to operationalize the community’s decision. Themba was tasked, along with a small delegation, to collect residents who would then enter the streets. He remembered the events clearly: “We agree that tomorrow morning [23 February] we must wake up, let’s meet there by the grounds, next to my house. So, we went to sleep. In the morning, I didn’t set an alarm; in fact, I normally wake up around four in the morning every time. So, what happened is that I heard the whistles that it’s time for us to wake up, I wake up, I found like four comrades.”12

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5.1 Young man standing with burning material at protest. Edwin Lefutswane (nicknamed “Sibi”) stands with a stick next to burning material outside the settlement during a protest. His political and ideological training began in Thembelihle at the tender age of ten when he started campaigning for the okm. He has stood up for schoolchildren at his own school who were being discriminated against on the basis of race. He has since held a range of executive leadership positions in the tcc.

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5.2 Activists taking notes and listening. Siphiwe Segodi, seated and taking notes, and others at a meeting to discuss the arrests of comrades in 2015. While the spectacle of protests or mass action is often newsworthy, activists spend most of their time adhering to discipline: sitting down in a circle, taking notes and listening to each other.

Thembelihle is divided into different sections: D1, D2, F, and N. The delegation swelled as it passed each section, blowing whistles and knocking on the doors of people’s shacks to call them to action. The numbers grew from twenty to thirty and then sixty. By the time they reached the main road they were a group of a hundred. There they met others, who had also been gathering the masses. Following the relatively controlled demonstration held the previous year and the failure of officials to respond to their demands, the community was now resorting to militancy. They barricaded the roads: We started singing there, burning tires, putting stones on the road, you know, big rocks, anything you can find, you know? Put [it] on the road, burn [it]. And then obviously some cars were stoned there, I mean when they tried to pass. Until the police came and then they started to patrol the traffic on our side, like the cars had to pass [on]

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this [other] side. Then we keep on protesting until the early hours. Where the police came and just [told] us to move. And they were shooting [rubber bullets], you know? … They’d throw tear gas and stuff. And [stun] grenades. Throughout the day.13 Some of the residents, particularly young men, congregated behind large sheets of corrugated metal and threw stones at the police officers who were firing rubber bullets at them. The temperature in Thembelihle had risen; now it was burning. A man of Indian descent who lived in the surrounding middle-class area joined the police action late in the evening, around ten p.m. He told the protesters that they had to move out of the area and stop the demonstration. Members of the tcc responded that they could not end the protest themselves since it was the community that had decided to initiate it. The first day of major protest action had passed. Themba slept for a brief period and woke up Tuesday morning, on the second day of the protest, to a new situation: “Hey! There are a lot of police now. We couldn’t even go to the streets … but we managed to go to the robots [on the edge of the major road] and sing there.”14 The unofficial siege by the state, in the form of armed police action, had begun. The state would now employ the carrot-and-stick strategy, using negotiating processes and promises of service delivery alongside the iron fist of police presence. That morning, the tcc was told that they would meet with a representative from the government. They deliberated over a way forward, given that an undeclared state of emergency was developing. Mamabolo, for whom the community was waiting, did not show up, but other government officials present asked the tcc to tell the community (at a mass meeting) that he would meet with them in two weeks’ time. The tcc then indicated that it could not “make a decision now. You have made promises, so you can come and tell the community yourself what Mamabolo is saying.”15 The officials refused to address the mass meeting, presumably because they feared that they would be scolded for their lack of responsiveness or, worse, that there could be violence. The tcc concluded that the protest was now the government’s responsibility, since they were refusing to speak to the community. The tcc reported back to the community at sa block, where mass meetings were normally held. The following morning, Thursday, 26 February, the man of Indian descent who had asked members of the community to end the protest then unleashed a gun. Instead of shooting rubber bullets to stun, as the police had, he sprayed live ammunition at a group of protesters.16 Three

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people were wounded and sent to a nearby hospital; another young man was killed.17 The media was now present and the police were attempting to negotiate with the protesters. However, the protesters were reluctant to engage in negotiation: it seemed too dangerous. They thought it likely at this stage that if they met with the police, they would be arrested: Now I think it is time for us to move a little bit back … they are going to shoot now. Because they were wearing these vests and stuff. They would take out guns. We said, “No, let’s take the comrades to [our mass meeting point] Park Station.” I think it was around eleven a.m. We went to Park Station, we had a meeting there. And then we agreed that, no, I think we need to send a delegation to talk to the commissioner or the police [officer] who is in charge there. To tell [the police] that that they don’t have to shoot people; people are protesting peacefully.18 The delegation consisted of fifty to sixty people including Trevor Ngwane who had, throughout the tcc’s existence, played a key role in shaping the organization’s politics, providing solidarity and injecting a socialist ideology. Having heard about the ongoing violence in the area, he went to find out what was happening on the ground and to offer his negotiation skills. The delegation raised their hands up as if to say “don’t shoot” and to offer a sign of peace. They sang the hymn which was popularized during the anti-apartheid movement, “Senzenina?” (“What Have We Done?”).19 The majority sat down, and three people, including Trevor, went directly to the commissioner to request that the police refrain from shooting at the residents. They argued that it was their right to protest. The police did not heed their request and instead proceeded to arrest fifteen of the people who had been seated. When Trevor asked why they were arresting them, the police responded by arresting him and another activist as well. A total of thirty-six people were arrested, and some days later a further thirty-six were arrested.20 According to the secretary of the tcc, who escaped arrest and has substantial legal experience surrounding the freedom of expression and the right to protest, “All the arrests were unprovoked and not justifiable in terms of the law. The first group were arrested when they peacefully sought a meeting with the police commanders.”21 The next section brings to life the police repression which haunts those in Thembelihle who seek to extend the practice of democracy in their locality. The below sections home in on the detention and brutality which was inflicted in the events surrounding the 26 February police

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intervention. Soon, meetings of half a dozen people in the settlement were no longer tolerated by police officials. An unofficial state of emergency was now in place in the area.22

arresting grassroots democracy When activists use direct action as a form of popular participation, especially in the form of occupation of public space including the shut-down of roads, police and state repression will likely follow. Participatory governance is traditionally viewed from the top-down through state institutions and experiments, but when seen through the lens of grassroots movements – their own organic forms of participatory governance – another story altogether emerges. The anc government’s rules, values, and norms, which govern whether or not, and the extent to which, local “development” in Thembelihle should unfold, differed fundamentally from activists in the lead up to and during the 2015 occupation. For the anc, the people of Thembelihle were supposed to move to the relatively far, and inconvenient, area called Lehae, and Thembelihle could not be developed. But for many residents and activists in the tcc, the land was rightfully theirs and service delivery a birth right. Instead of sending authorities to engage with the community’s long-standing concerns, the state was decidedly more dedicated to sending the police. The process of participation – of getting their voices to be heard – was not one only of calm deliberations in boardrooms: as we saw previously, these consistently failed. The process of participation is fundamentally one of power relations. History has demonstrated, and activists have learned, that power can only be ceded to the community by going to the streets. To participate in decisionmaking, residents of informal settlements and townships, the dispossessed, must organize and disrupt the everyday economic activities of the surrounding areas and then, inevitably, face the sustained onslaught of the state. In a well-known case in the Free State in South Africa, in an area called Ficksburg, Andries Tatane was shot dead by police using rubber bullets during a protest for water and sanitation. These bullets are supposedly meant to stun, but when used at close range can be fatal. In Marikana, easily the most well-known case nationally, thirty-four miners who were on a strike demanding a living wage were gunned down by the police with automatic weapons. The struggle for basic services in Thembelihle, and many other poor Black areas in post-apartheid South Africa, is intimately linked to state repression and violence – which imposes bodily and also

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psychological harm. As the 2015 protest escalated in intensity through February and March 2015, becoming easily one of the most prolonged and militant protests in the post-apartheid period, so did repression hit harder and in a more dehumanising and relentless fashion. While this book in general details the ways in which Thembelihle has been repressed by the state in both covert and overt ways, the next five subsections go further by highlighting how repression and political activism seeps into the lives of the activists’ children, some of whom bear psychological scars which they will likely carry to adulthood. I begin with a married couple who were painted as “ring leaders” by the police, before turning to a resident who was arrested with thirty-five others while on his way back from dropping his child at school. The section thereafter discusses the context in which another man who was fleeing the police was shot in the leg by the police and was unable to lay charges, and then turns to two others whose political identities were cemented (or in one case transformed) by the 2015 occupation.

“the protest was painted with my name” Nhlakanipho Lukhele (Nhlakanipho) was amongst the most vocal leaders of the tcc in the lead up to the 2015 occupation. At that time, he was the spokesperson of the committee, a position which places one at the forefront of public debate in the surrounding communities. The series of demonstration in 2015 would have an unpredictable set of consequences for his household. The household’s story provides a pertinent example illustrating the reinforcement of gender inequalities in terms of grassroots activism in Thembelihle. Nhlakanipho’s activities were centred on the public domain, while his wife Mponyana Lukhele (Mponyana) took on the essential task of staying home with the children. Local struggles for service delivery in South Africa depend on social reproduction, an integral component of contentious politics without which the community’s children would be consistently abandoned. Though she did not initially enter the streets at the beginning of the February 2015 protest, staying home with their kids, they did not escape the ensuing police repression that day. In fact, their kids, at the time of writing, are scarred by the abuse of the state. Mponyana was born on 20 August 1989 in Jabavu, Soweto, and has three children – two girls and one boy. She explained that they “moved from Soweto because they [my parents] were sharing a small house with their siblings, and the extended family, granny … and then the other gen-

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eration and us so it was too much to share the same space.”23 Her grandmother left the house when Mponyana was born because of the new spatial arrangements that come with more people living in one home. Her parents moved with her to Thembelihle in 1996, when her grandmother passed away, in order to have privacy and living space. They obtained their stands and, like thousands of other families who came before them, built corrugated iron shacks in which to sleep, cook, and bath. During what was then the height of militancy in the settlement from the early 2000s, Mponyana, still only a girl,“used to participate a lot in the protests … until I had kids that is when I stopped participating in the protests and [I needed to then] make sure I am in the house to guard [them] … Usually they throw tear gas,” she lamented, “and [if] kids are alone it is not safe.” She witnessed first-hand the violence inflicted by the state through the police; she explained a situation in which the police would engulf the streets, chasing activists and protestors into people’s yards and knocking their doors open, irrespective of whether women and children were at home. Having the responsibility of taking care of the children, she initially stayed home in their yard to avoid any conflict with the police. Within the first two days of the demonstrations in the street it became clear that activists such as Nhlakanipho were being targeted: “When he comes back in the house, we knew that we were supposed to change the places where we sleep, because the police would come after us and they used to hurt the children a lot. I think the way they treated our children was not good because those children are not okay even today. The kids are now behaving in a certain way. Even this one who we thought was a reserved child.”24 Throughout the years of contentious action, a pattern had developed: the police would knock on the doors loudly and violently, in search of activists who they believed were at the forefront of the community’s desire to stand up and fight. They would come in, she recalled, and arrest her husband in front of the kids. On certain nights the family would sleep at her relative’s dwelling. Thursday 26 February 2015 was the turning point in the struggle since someone had been killed and the police were now in a much larger force. When Nhlankanipho and others were arrested and thrown into a police van on that day, things took a turn for the worse for his family. Mponyana explained, “When I left the house I was about to cook pap [maize meal porridge].” She told her children to “close the door. I am going out to look for your father, on my way back I will buy milk.” She made her way over to the demonstration and found her husband at the traffic lights. He told

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her not to wait up for him since he was tired and needed to rest before spending time with the children. Those who were in the streets then held a meeting at Park Station to discuss the way forward: When we were still discussing then we got a message that the police are arresting people in the shacks from one shack to the other. Then we decided, let us go and try to negotiate with them [police] that we are here not to fight, they [the group at Park Station] must also tell [this to] those who are inside the shacks. We then raised our hands and went to them [the police]. When we go there we were ordered [by our leaders] to sit down to show them we are not fighting with them. We sat down and the leaders stood up, that was Trevor [Ngwane] and Nhlakanipho.25 They told the police that they “were not there to fight, but we want the government to listen to us regarding our needs.” She recalled, “That was all that we wanted.” But instead of listening to their plea, the police surrounded and cornered both groups of activists. Those who had been sitting still and peacefully ran away to avoid being arrested or brutalized. Mponyana, unlike most of the others, was unable to run. Before she knew it, she recalled, “there was another police officer who was next to me [and] he pulled me down with a gun. He grabbed me and threw me inside the police van.”26 She was shocked that they were arrested while the leaders were attempting to have talks with the police. The reality of being forcibly assigned to a police van for an unknown period of time set in as the door shut. Mponyana was thrown for another loop when she saw her husband sitting with her. Recalling the events brought her to tears: “I explained to him [my husband] that we tried to run out but we could not because we did not even see these officers approaching because we [were] seated down.”27 What would happen to the children left home alone? Thoughts raced through her head. They would need to eat. The eldest was twelve years old but had not yet learned to cook on his own. Nhlakanipho’s version of events on the same day indicates that he was anything but surprised to be targeted by the state. As he put it, “The 2015 protest was painted with my name.”28 That Thursday morning, before the arrests, the community had neither heard directly from the official whom they called nor did his representatives agree to address the mass meeting two days earlier. To further escalate matters, as mentioned already, late in the hours of Wednesday night (following a meeting at Park Station) a man

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of Indian dissent had opened fire with live ammunition into a field of protestors, killing one and injuring others. The residents continued to block the road between Lenasia and Thembelihle in the early hours of the morning. Clashes between the police and residents were sustained throughout the morning. Tear gas and rubber bullets were employed by the police who battled against protestors, some of whom carried rocks and bricks and even corrugated iron as shields. There were reports that school children were recruited and that young students, who apparently left school earlier, were armed with sling shots in self-defence.29 As discussed in the previous sections, the protestors had decided to occupy the roads earlier that week. They had hoped to obtain a response from Mamabolo in person, but he did not come. Nhlakanipho echoed the view of many of the residents: “When there is a protest people will barricade the roads not because they are violent but in order to get attention from the government.” His own consistent engagement in the dance of negotiations with government, including through protests in the form of occupation, indicated to him that, “you must do something that will bring a standstill [in the area].”30 Interrupting the everyday activities, particularly economic ones but also, as a last resort, children’s education, is the result of desperation. Members of the community, in particular its leaders, do not wish for this outcome. It is more accurate to argue that their exclusion from the fruits of democracy – water, electricity, housing, and even education – and from participatory democratic processes in the state (the unwillingness or supposed inability of officials to engage with them on equal footing) imposes this reality upon them. When the roads were shut down, the police did not attempt to open negotiations in a “proper manner” but responded with force. According to Nhlakanipho’s recollection of events on the day, “They [police] just shot at people. People started to retaliate and threw back at the police with stones. That thing last[ed] for three hours, then after that they [police] came with a proper approach of wanting to engage. So as leadership of tcc we went to them trying to find an amicable solution on how to get Jacob Mamabolo to come and address us.” As they moved from Park Station back to the streets, they brought with them a plan. The crowd behind them came as support but sat down as instructed by the leaders, Nhlankanipho and Trevor. The two activists moved about ten metres towards the police who they told, “You have been firing teargas and it is affecting our kids and these rubber bullets are hurting people, even those who are not part of the protest.” They explained, “We are tired

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of that,” and asked the officers that they collectively find a solution. About three quarters of an hour passed and the Johannesburg Metro Police Department (jmpd) called for back-up.31 The police went on the offensive. A group amongst the police headed towards the crowd of about fifty people. It seems they were perceived as ring-leaders: “We thought that maybe they went there to make sure that everything was in order but we were wrong because that was their strategy of surrounding us. Well, what happened is that someone said, ‘Arrest!’ and that is when people realized that and they started to stand up and try to run away. We asked, ‘What is wrong now?’ Then we also [were] grabbed and we were told, ‘you are under arrest now.’”32 When Nhlakanipho asked, the police explained that they were going to the cells for public violence. They responded that this was a peaceful attempt at engagement, but the police were not interested: unjust or not, the matter would instead be settled in court and, for the immediate future, the activists would remain behind bars. The plans to demobilize the community by arresting its leadership were in motion, but this too would backfire as we shall see. Knowing his association with the militant community in the midst of an occupation, the impassioned activist did not panic. If he was not detained then, perhaps he would have been found at his home later that night or in the early hours of the morning. As he laid his eyes upon his wife, now trapped inside the same van, his focus shifted to the children: “Who will look after them,” he asked himself, “because we are all here … during the day they might be playing, but when it gets late they will definitely need their mother to look after them.”33 When they arrived at the station, Nhlakanipho pleaded with the officers that either he or his wife needed to be released to tend to the children. His plea fell on deaf ears. He spent hours attempting to negotiate until lawyers arrived. The lawyer checked on the prisoners asking them where they stayed and if their children were ok. They explained that the kids were left alone. The lawyer attempted to reason with the officers but they would not budge. The prisoners spent the night in jail. Mponyana recalled that: It was very hard; it was only one day [but] it was like one year behind bars. It was as if we are not going to be released but the good part was the comrades brought us food. Unfortunately, even the food it was difficult to eat, like I lost appetite completely. I did not want to do anything at all.34

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In the meantime, their lawyer concocted a plan. He thought to himself, let me bring the children to the cells. That convinced the officers and the following morning Mponyana was released. When she arrived home there was no hero’s welcome waiting. She walked into their yard and as she began to approach her children the mother could see the looks on their faces. They had already been traumatized: It was like they were being beaten, they were afraid as well. Like they were stressed a lot. They were very quiet and they were not happy when they saw me coming. When I came out I saw that my children were deeply hurt. I could see fear in their eyes. Have you ever seen someone who has been hurt? That was the state of my children when they saw me. They did not even say anything to me. They were very quiet at that moment.35 The kids are scarred: “Their lives are never the same again,” she recalled. They had been left alone to fend for themselves, unsure when their parents would arrive back home. They had witnessed the arrest of their father on multiple occasions. The eldest child, particularly, may not listen and cannot, at times, distinguish between right and wrong. He does not heed to his mother’s request that he not walk alone at night. The second-born daughter, Mponyana deduced, is in need of counselling, but none of the children have received this. “In their eyes,” Mponyana explained, “they think their father is a criminal or some sort of thug … he thinks his father is useless.”36 The unjust arrest of peaceful activists without any notice may deny children parental guidance for which no family will ever be fully compensated. As we shall see with the case of Jack (a pseudonym), below, it can also deny people the right to daily necessities in the form of health care and supplies. Before leaving the cells, Mponyana had obtained the names and addresses of those in need of medication: “When I went back home … [I] went from house to house collecting their medication.” She went back to the cells but even then, she remembered, “It was a fight because the police did not want the pill to go inside so we had to make plans [to get them in].”37

“if i get arrested, who will look after my children?” Jack was born in Limpopo province on 12 December 1983. His upbringing, in particular his family’s own economic hardship, immensely shaped the trajectory of his childhood and hence his likely destiny as he was

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unable to complete his matric: “I couldn’t proceed with my education due to poverty. We were raised by a single parent and we struggled since our old mother had to wake up and go to work in the farms. It was hard so I decided to leave school and get jobs.” He moved to Thembelihle in 2000. At the time of the interview, he had three children and worked as a nearby petrol station. In the very year he arrived, he experienced a protest against the forced evictions: “I was there as a community member. Although I had come to look for a job … I participated because I could identify with the struggle. So ever since I got here to Thembelihle I participate in each and every thing in the community.”38 When asked about his political loyalty and why he moved away from mainstream political parties, he became excited when he indicated that the Democratic Alliance (the official opposition to the anc) was not in touch with ordinary people’s realities on the ground. They do not push, in his perspective, for the programs of the people. Rather it is the political party of the okm (the electoral front largely defined by the tcc and the secc) that has brought about changes in the community by pressuring the ruling party to deliver: Simple! You go with the people that help you. When I look at the da I don’t see anything that I benefit there. But at okm I have seen a lot of changes where I stay in Thembelihle. For example we got electricity. Had it not been for Operation Khanyisa Movement we would not have electricity because the government of the anc was pushing its own agenda and they were oppressing us such that we did not get electricity because this is an informal settlement that was gonna [be re]move[d] at any time. But the okm followed the procedure until we got electricity. There are many things that okm does in the community. For us to have water and toilets and everything, its ’coz of the okm.39 Jack reads the anc as saying to itself, “If we don’t do it they [the community] will see how bad we [the anc] are.” He believes therefore that: If we look at who really is behind the achievement it’s the okm that pushed them to do it. People think it’s the anc that did this and that [since they are in power] but it’s not the anc, it’s the government but the government needs to be pushed [by us] so that we get what we want. So who was doing that? It was the okm. So I realized that there was nothing important that the da had done so that’s why I changed.40

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When the three-week long uprising or stay-away in Thembelihle emerged both organically in the community and simultaneously as part of the program of the tcc, he did not attend the community discussion, particularly the Sunday mass meeting, or what they term the People’s Parliament, that led up to the decision to initiate protest. Nor did he, similarly to many other residents, perceive that this particular series of demonstrations would be extraordinary. He remembered that “Unfortunately I was not there [in the deliberations]. I was not in the meeting most probably because I was at work. So I … [was] not really sure what was said [initially] and what they were protesting about.” On Sundays when the mass meeting, the People’s Parliament, takes place members of the community regardless of political affiliation make important decisions about the way forward. Thereafter, by word of mouth, on the streets and in people’s yards, others learn the plan of action. If you are a resident of Thembelihle, it is impossible to completely ignore if an occupation is taking place: it may come to define one’s daily lived experiences even if you did not take part in any of the action. If Jack was unaware of the occupation when he left for work on Monday morning, he learned, first-hand, when he arrived back at the settlement: “I asked other residents – they said it was all about service delivery, especially electricity. It was bad that shacks were burning due to the candles and other people [said] they can’t even afford the candles. So it was all about service delivery with electricity being the priority.”41 As discussed earlier, the protest had been underway since the early hours of Monday morning. The community had made the decision that children should be allowed to go to school, but the employed should be discouraged from going to work. Jack was therefore conflicted since he had become aware of the ongoing struggle but at the same time was under pressure to clock in: “I go to work, but when there is a protest it’s hard to go to work. But I used to try and as a comrade I would wake up at night like a rat and go to work because at the end of the day I was working for Indians who won’t understand the issue of the struggle and [they] ask you, ‘how come the other employees came [but you did not]?’”42 On Thursday, 26 February, Jack was scheduled to run an errand. This everyday experience was transformed by the events surrounding the intensifying protest action in the community. On his way back home there was a buzz in the streets: “I heard that there had been people that had been shot by live ammunition, not rubber bullets, and that one had died. And so as a community member it affected me and I wanted to find out what was going on.” He joined an ad hoc resident’s meeting at Park Station, the most prominent area in which residents congregate to discuss broad issues

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facing their community. He was told that someone had been shot. He did not know the status of the person who was shot or whether others had also been shot or perhaps even killed. His version of events reflects the non-violent way in which they strategically responded to uncover what was happening and to develop an appropriate way forward in the context of what was seeming to become a very dire situation: “The community decided to find out peacefully who got shot and where they were and so forth. And no one was carrying a weapon or stone.”43 They walked from Park Station to the main k 43 traffic lights: We were lifting our hands up on the way to the robot [traffic lights] while singing struggle songs. On getting to the robot I remember singing the song that encourages the people to settle down and indeed they all sat down and Nhlakanipho and Trevor went to Kubecker [the police commander] and I also went there to the front of him. And at the back of my mind I knew I [simply should run my errand]. So I thought since there is no more violence it’s my chance to cross the road … It was already late at that time.44 While they were speaking to the station commander, Jack began to cross the road. However, it was too late. The leaders had hoped to negotiate the way forward given the ongoing demonstration waged by the community, but the police had another plan: they surrounded the people who were sitting peacefully with their hands up singing the mournful song, “Senzenina?.” Havoc then ensued while Jack was at some distance from the main group: “When I looked back I heard the sound of rubber bullets and saw people being arrested, thrown into a truck and the like. So there was nothing violent that we were doing and you can’t run if you have done nothing wrong because running is an admission of guilt.”45 The police grabbed Jack and forced him into the van. He asked why he was being arrested, but they did not offer an answer: their rights were not read. Instead, the police abandoned them momentarily: “They let us sit in the van for a long time, about two hours … we were locked up in the hot van – in the hot month of February.” In the meantime, the police raided the informal settlement, arresting anyone they came across, particularly leaders. They were taken to the local Lenasia police station. At four or five in the afternoon the station commander engaged with Jack and the others. The commander suggested that the leaders were responsible for the theft that was taking place in the community and the stoning of cars. Perceived community leaders in post-apartheid South Africa

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tend to be blamed for any illegal activities or wrong doings which take place during stay-aways or protests, regardless of whether they are involved and sometimes, as was the case in Thembelihle, even when they are actively developing plans to prevent theft. The practice is arguably linked to the state’s attempt to quell mass resistance: it is centred on the notion that ordinary community members who take to the streets are simply mindless sheep following the direction of a handful of troublemakers who have incited them. Jack informed the commander, “I wanted to go [across the road] and you just arrest people without questioning them,” and proceeded to ask, “Why did you arrest people who are seated?” The commander apparently replied that cars were being stoned. “Did you not see that?” Cars were not being stoned at the time of the arrest and there was no obvious or direct link between these community activists and the attack on property. Jack lamented: “He didn’t want to listen to us so they put us in cells and charged us at around midnight. That’s when they told us why we were arrested and what we were being charged for. Then you realize you are being charged for public violence but you have not been violent and you can see a person who was throwing stones – his hands will be dirty, but I was dressed ok and clean.”46 The long-standing community leader comrade Ghetto was among those targeted late that evening by the raids. Many others like him fled the area, but Ghetto thought otherwise: “I wanted to go underground as well but I considered my family, I cannot leave them alone. If they want to arrest me, they rather come and arrest me in front of them, my wife and children.” Indeed, the police went from yard to yard, house to house, with a list of names, searching for residents whom the state had positioned as the rabble-rousers of the community: They ended up coming in the early morning, three a.m. They never knocked or make any sign or [activating] the siren of the police. We just heard the gate being broken. When they approached the door, that is when I was ready for them. That is when I told them that I am by the door so I opened the door and they asked me, “Where is Ghetto?” … Then one of the ladies [in the yard] … kept saying I am Ghetto and then they arrested me.47 Rather than being taken to the cells, Ghetto was brought to an office for questioning. The police had hoped to convince him and other perceived leaders to put an end to the protest: “They wanted to make a plea

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to us so that we can be released and [they also said that] we have to go and call the action off.”48 The police brought Ghetto and others back to their homes, but it appears that they misinterpreted the extent to which the community itself had in fact called the action. It would be meaningless for the leaders, such as Ghetto, to say to community members that the protest needed to cease. The protest continued while twenty-seven accused remained in jail. The experience of being arrested and charged for public violence had a moving effect on Jack, who had been arrested while his son was at school. It was not what he was subjected to physically behind bars but rather the experience of being isolated from, and helpless in, the outside world: At times I don’t even want to think about it. I have never been arrested. I have never broken the law. So going to jail meant leaving behind my family here, my child, my wife, not even knowing what they will eat. You see here I am the mother, the father, the child all in one … the kids are no longer safe. They can [be] abduct[ed] at any time. If a woman goes out trying to buy bread they can rape her. A lot can happen … On coming from work I make sure I buy bread and bring it but I was not there at that time so I was asking myself how they were going to cope and also in the evening when it’s time to sleep. You know how our places are [experiencing] too much violence etc., let alone [the fact that] there is a car here in the yard and a lot of thugs that might know that the guy [of the house] is in jail and the wife is all by herself with the child in the house … you think, what will happen?49 “This thing tormented me,” he recalled, “since I was not there to protect the ones that I love.” His inner sense of insecurity, however, did not get the best of him. His wife would visit on occasion, relieving him, and individuals within the community also committed to look after his family in his absence. Jack also had diabetes. He was supposed to take his medicine and to follow a specific diet. Behind bars he had no access and only received whatever limited food was on the prescribed menu. He became sick on the second day, a Friday, but he was only taken out of the cell to the clinic in the early hours of the following morning: I was so embarrassed going to hospital guarded by the police on both sides with handcuffs on. I remember when I got to … [the clinic] there was a child that was crying … And I wish I could meet that

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woman [the child’s mother] again now when I am free so that she can see that I am not the person she thought I was. You know she used me to threaten her child to keep quiet! She said, “Shhh! Look at that thug!” And when the child opened his eyes, she stopped crying, but I was sick and handcuffed and felt embarrassed. It eroded my dignity and I could not look people in the eye. If only the child knew that I am not a thug. I felt like crying but I told myself that as a man I have to accept every situation I see. I must be strong.50 On the eighth day they were moved from Lenasia Police Station to nearby Moroka police station, en route to the notorious Sun City, as Diepkloof Central Prison is widely and ironically called. They headed to the cells in Moroka police station where they would await payment of bail. A so-called thug with a glass bottle angrily confronted another prisoner, threatening to stab him. The group that Jack was with had the instinct to protect the man who was under siege, exclaiming, “Sorry bro, please have mercy on his behalf.” They were put into a truck with the other accused, including the man who was brandishing a bottle. The situation seemed to be going from bad to worse. Jack recalled, “I was so nervous about getting there because of the red flags.” He fixated on the decision he made on Thursday morning in the moments leading up to his arrest. He further explained to us an interview, “I asked myself a lot of questions and regretted going to the robot and blamed myself and had many [regrets], if only, in my head, if only I had [not left the house] … but eventually I stopped blaming myself and accepted the situation as a man.”51 Jack told himself, “We will cross the bridge when we get there.” The inhumane nature of the prison further revealed itself as they entered Sun City. “When we got there,” he reflected, “it was terrible, my friend.” They were instructed to sit down and as a routine initiation their bodies were violated as they were searched: “Another man like you grabs your private parts but you have to accept that because you are a prisoner and he is just doing his job.” Late in the afternoon, they were brought to the holding cells where they would sleep. Each of them was given packets of Sweet Aid – flavoured sugar to mix with water – but they were not allocated cups, and thereafter they were provided with two slices of bread.52 The suggestion that the activists were arrested while standing up for their rights during a peaceful demonstration had no bearing in this bounded time and space. Instead “Killers, rapists, hijackers,” Jack believed, occupied the cell with them. The comforts of everyday life ceased to exist:

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There was no sleeping place – the beds were occupied and we had to sleep on the floor and gathered together [with the group they came with] for warmth. We didn’t even sleep [with] the bugs and all. I woke up at one a.m. thinking it was morning and took my T-shirt thinking that it was sunrise. One guy [in the cell] wanted to recruit his friend so they can come to me accusing me of making noise and the other one told him to be careful because there was many of us. That’s how I survived. It was bad, some that go to prison come back in body bags.53 The following day, Jack and others were taken out of the cells to the doctors to be tested for various ailments, including hiv and tb. The longer-standing convicts in the jail were rough around the edges: “There are people bullying others and the permanent inmates called us with girl names like Sibongile and they were sharing us amongst themselves, picking and choosing.” By then he was shaking. He asked Siphiwe during the interview to “imagine a man shaking,” as he considered the possibility that he could be raped. However, he was relieved when he and the others he was arrested with were called and told that their bail had been paid.54 On his arrival back home in his community, he was not met with open arms. Instead, he felt rejected: Even at church – I am a church goer and I participate at church, but because I was coming from jail people were standing in groups talking [about me]. So that experience changes a person [because] you can see that people are judging you. My son even asked me [if] I am a convict and I asked him why and he said he heard people speaking. So you see, it also affects the kids. And when I am not around the child sometimes asks his mother, “Where is dad?” So you have to explain to the child properly after he has heard rumours in the streets. And he can even boast [if he knew about the politics of the arrest] that his dad is coming from jail and so forth. But the child doesn’t understand why you were arrested. All he knows is that you were arrested and [that] only thugs get arrested.55 Upon his arrival he also remembers observing that other children were unwilling to play with his child, believing that his father was dangerous. In addition, he was suspended from work under the “no work, no pay” policy. Jack was therefore forced to borrow from his parents in order to

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make ends meet. He asked himself, “How can I preach at church while people are judging me?” He deduced that even if he was to share the full story with other members in his community, they would not believe him. To date, his criminal record prevents him from applying for new jobs: “They just disqualify me based upon a previous arrest.”56 All of this, he ascertained, could lead one to commit crimes in revenge: to get back at the system. If one is unjustly alienated from the employment process, why not steal to get by? Above and beyond the effects that the arrests in Thembelihle have had on individuals such as Jack, they have also had the effect of criminalizing protest: creating a broad disquiet within the community that if one participates in any, even peaceful, protest, as Jack had done on that day, they will be victimized by the state and, thereafter, stigmatized by their own community. The traumatic experiences in jail and stigmatization outside of it led Jack to question his involvement in local politics in the community. He felt uncomfortable participating not only in peaceful protests but also in regular community meetings: “I was afraid. Imagine just a meeting because there are people that come and take photos and I might appear and get arrested again at my house. So I am now afraid to go and stand in front and raise a point because they can come to your house and arrest you for saying this and that and you are on record as evidence, yet you were only just talking.”57 On the one hand, he resolved that the community benefitted from the 2015 protest since their area was electrified thereafter, while on the other he feels remorse for not continuing to play a leading role in local politics and in the improvement of the lives of people around him. “But if I go and get arrested,” he wondered, “who will look after my children?”58 From the moment he was forced into a police van while crossing the street, the state effectively buried his right to fetch bread for his family, to attend work, and to go home to his wife.

caught in the crossfire As highlighted previously, the evening of 25 February (the day before residents were surrounded by police and arrested), was a turning point in the struggle. A gun was pointed, trigger pulled, and live ammunition fired. For what? For being part of a demonstration or walking too close to an insurgent moment. This time it was not an excessively violent state wielding its power over a community intent on forcing the government to listen to their plea. Instead, it was, arguably, an Indian man’s racist applica-

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tion of his sense of inferiority towards his Black neighbours that would lead one resident to pay the ultimate price: his life. Fed up with the ongoing disruption that the occupation was having in his own front yard, he sprayed live ammunition at a group of protesters. In his mind, it seemed, Black people’s lives did not matter. It was obvious to those who observed that it was murder, but no one was immediately held responsible. One man named Mathata Ralekgokgo was caught in the crossfire, hit with a bullet. Barely escaping death, he survived to tell Siphiwe his story nearly five years later. He was born on 29 September 1986 in Limpopo, and his first language is Sepedi. He has six children – three boys and three girls – the youngest of whom was two in July 2019 when the interview took place. He was aware that there was an ongoing demonstration in his community, but his evening seemed relatively normal. He and his brother had been building a garage as part of a small informal business that they ran together: what is called “a piece job.” “[I] came home very late with my brother. Then my brother left and went home to Limpopo that very same day. I dropped [off] somewhere in Park Station [the main taxi rank on the border of Thembelihle] and then I walked home.”59 Then there was an unexpected turn of events. He heard gunshots very close to him and told himself that he should get into his house before inquiring as to what was happening. He recalls the precise moment at which it happened, late in the evening on 25 February 2019: The moment I reached the gate, that is when I got shot before I could even get inside the house. After that I decided not even to get into the house and I could hear that these gunshots are coming from behind and it was quite a lot of them. Then I decided to go back, and I ran away. That is when I realized I am actually bleeding [from my hand], but I was not feeling any pain, [then] … I realized I am bleeding a lot and the pains started creeping in.60 He met a man who took him to a nearby tuck-shop run by a Pakistani shop-keeper. The man tied his hand with a belt to prevent the blood from continuing to gush. In the midst of this emergency, people were talking, but while Mathata sat he began to become dizzy. He was taken by a neighbour to Baragwanath public hospital where he waited patiently, still bleeding, to be tended to by a doctor. The doctor examined him and said he needed x-rays of his hand which they did. He recalled that “The bullet was still inside and they said they have to take it out and then they will check exactly where the bullet is coming from.”61

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This event was detrimental not only psychologically and physically but also in terms of his material well-being: I have to go to the clinic [regularly] and I have to spend [my own money] even going there. This affected me very much because I am somebody who hustles [for work] so during that time [when I was beginning to heal], I could not do anything. If there were people looking for me to do handywork I was supposed to hire some other guys to do the job [with me] … I can say I am ok [now –four years later] but not one hundred per cent ok. When I handle heavy stuff I can feel that my hand is not ok, but I still have to work.62 Rumours emerged within the community about those who were shot on that day being bribed R5000 to keep quiet. Indeed, the stakes were high given that the shooter could be prosecuted for murder. “After I left for the hospital,” he recalled, “I heard that there were people in my yard trying to burn my house down.” Through this, Mathata remained dignified and somehow had a positive outlook: “I did not follow up on those things, I just kept quiet. I told myself that despite [the fact] that I have been shot, God is still alive.” He focused on a holistic healing process instead of attempting to understand what other people were thinking and how to prosecute the man who shot him. Sitting calmly in his own yard, he reflected that, “5000 will not help me in [getting] anywhere because they wanted to give us this amount each so that they can dismiss the case.”63 Following that evening’s shootings, a small group of residents had threatened to burn down the house of the man with the gun, and others allegedly sought to cut off the electricity boxes that served the surrounding community of Lenasia. This was part of a strategy to prevent the normal functioning of life amongst middle-class people who had access to basic services including electricity. This practice is based on the notion that when the middle-classes can no longer function with “business as usual” and their lives become directly affected in a negative way, then, and only then, will the government respond to the plight of the poor. The police call for calm within the community fell on deaf ears. One resident indicated that the protests would be sustained until the electricity crisis was dealt with: “These police, they want people just to be quiet but now people can’t cook, we can’t find any food. We don’t want cars passing here because we want to call for government to sort out this problem.”64

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joining the “true struggle” For some activists, including a young man named Sello Lerotholi, participation in the 2015 stay-away transformed their political identities. Sello was born in Bloemfontein on 22 February 1974. He was raised by his grandmother in Northwest province. After he completed his matric in 1993, he moved to Thembelihle with his mother, who by that time had been a domestic worker for a family of Indian descent in Lenasia since the mid-1980s. His mother has been living in the same shack in Thembelihle for nearly thirty-five years. In the mid-2000s, Sello also spent some time living in Pretoria with his former wife and he commuted to Germiston where he was employed. He did not participate in the 2011 protest which, until the 2015 threeweek stay-away, was the longest and most potent in the area since residents had mobilized against the evictions nearly a decade earlier: “That one of 2011, I was just coming [back to Thembelihle] and [I] run away because I was working somewhere and … I will [just] watch [it unfold] on television.” The 2015 uprising which Sello took part in transformed his political identity. Prior to that he was an anc member: “I wasn’t dwelling much on things of [local politics] … you know because when you are staying in Pretoria, it was known that it’s either you are an anc member or whatsoever. But when I arrived here [it was a different story], as [I] knew that our parents are suffering here.”65 He understood that the tcc was at the forefront of the battle to improve the lives of Thembelihleans. He joined the community’s struggle on the ground in the February 2015 protest but nevertheless remained a card-carrying member of the anc. “There was a group called tcc, then I have to join them [in struggle],” he recalled. He was amongst those thirtysix who were arrested at the traffic lights on Thursday 26 February 2015 while singing “Senzenina”: “I remember that song and then going to the robots … it’s when the police started to arrest each and every one who was there and they were arresting people who were sitting down which means people were not fighting.”66 Sello recalled that the community had gathered on the streets on the second day of the series of occupations to confront the fact that an Indian man had sprayed live ammunition into a crowd of protestors the night before, sending three Thembelihleans to the hospital and killing one. The arrested soon gained first-hand knowledge of the ways in which the criminal justice system discriminates against those who do not have access, in the outside world, to money: “They [the state] made sure that our court

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[date] came out late because the magistrate said he want[ed] r1000 each for bail and by the time when money was arranged for us to be released it was too late … Then they said the process for bailing people will be done in Sun City because at that time the clerk’s offices were closed and [then] we have been [finally] released from Sun City on Tuesday.”67 The tcc has a firm record of bailing out its comrades and anyone in the community who has been unjustly arrested during the enactment of contentious politics. The tcc worked alongside its working-class entities, such as the dlf, Socialist Group, and Keep Left, to raise funds (r1000 each) for bail for the thirty-six arrested. Sello was surprised that it was this organization, not the anc, of which he was a member, that came to his rescue. They did not check first who he had voted for or whether or not he was a member of the tcc in good standing: “It’s where I saw that, I told myself that I’m an anc member but those people they don’t care about people. They don’t care, even da, they don’t care, but the people who cared when the people were arrest[ed] is only tcc … then I became a tcc member because I saw that the things that they’re fighting for, they back you up and they make means that those people who were protesting are having lawyers.”68 Upon his return from jail, Sello went to the sa Block in Thembelihle where he had attended many local anc branch meetings. He stood in front of the party’s leadership and cut up his membership card while exclaiming, “Guys, I don’t need this membership card of yours, I’m there [now] because I saw that the okm stroke tcc is the good organisation.” Based upon his own ongoing observations, he concluded that the tcc and okm represent the “true struggle. They don’t say something and not do it [what they say] … they also do [consistent and disciplined] followups and that’s why I became a member by that time, even now I’m still a member.”69 “We now have electricity [because of the protest]” A young woman I shall call Bontle was born in 1995 in a small town in Limpopo province and moved to Thembelihle in the early 2010s. Her mother was employed some distance from home and could not be present much of the time, so her aunt made room for her to stay in Thembelihle. She completed grade ten before dropping out of school and is presently, like much of the youth in Thembelihle, unemployed. She understands that the unemployment problem has contributed to a situation in which young people see no future and tend to resort to drug abuse:

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I always see those kids who are wasted with drugs specifically nyaope [a cheap street drug concoction similar to heroine] … From an individual point of view I was looking forward that this community of Thembelihle there must be people who have the capability or the skills to speak to these nyaope addicts because already we have girls who have already joined this thing. This nyaope thing it is now forcing them to do bad things or let me say some of them do illegal things, they steal people’s stuff and they do not bath anymore. They even steal from us Black people.70 Like many other residents, she had fallen victim to the effects of drug abuse in her community and feared confronting addicts intent on any kind of petty theft that could feed their habit. Bontle still had hope and wished to see the people of Thembelihle thriving. But it was not the struggle against unemployment or drugs that would grant her initiation into comradeship: instead it was a question of the formalized power grids, a problem that had been bubbling beneath the surface for two decades before her arrival in the informal settlement, literally since before Bontle was born. She was in her late teens in February and March 2015 when the epic struggle for basic services, specifically electricity, reached its peak. Like many others, Bontle had understandably become tired of the dangers associated with live wire illegal or informal electricity connections. “We wanted what was rightfully ours,” she confidently asserted. In other words, formal electricity connections belonged to Thembelihleans. But instead of the state delivering basic services, they sent the police. “We did not go there [to the streets] to fight with them but at the end the police fought with us.”71 Activists pay the price when police brutality inevitably scars the consciousness of families and the minds of small children, undoubtedly infiltrating the lives of future generations – activists’ children’s children: They will get in the house and beat up people even shoot [them] with rubber bullet[s]. I remember my aunt’s husband he was here in the yard, they [police] went to fetch him because he was hiding under the bed. They took him out from the bed, they beat him thoroughly to an extent that they took out his two front teeth. They took him and locked him up and said he was beating them [the police] outside the gate and it is not true because he was in the house. Let me say at first he was sitting outside, immediately when they saw him he went inside the house but it did not help because already they saw him.

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They went straight into the house and took him out from under the bed and beat him up and they did all this with his children watching because [his son] was there as well and he is very young.72 Her uncle’s child was six years old and, in Bontle’s words, “He was crying uncontrollably.” In addition to house raids, rubber bullets, and beatings, teargas was also used against the community. This method not only targeted leading activists but affected many others, including Bontle’s asthmatic grandmother who was visiting Thembelihle: They ended up throwing teargas at us. I remember the other day when my granny visited from North West to this place when she arrived the protest has already started. So they threw teargas at the back of the house, the bad part was that she was asthmatic. So we had to take her from there to my aunt’s place so when we get there they threw another one right at the gate. Luckily my brother just arrived and he neutralized it with a type of a cloth and the smoke from the teargas was better.73 On 26 February 2015 she was amongst the protestors who had walked from a meeting at Park Station to the traffic lights in the aftermath of the previous night’s shootings. As Trevor and Nhlakanipho approached the police, Bontle was amongst those fifty or so people who sat down as a sign of peace, to indicate that they would not attack or throw a stone. They simply wanted to find out what was happening as one of their community members had been killed and three others had sustained injuries from live ammunition. Police nevertheless made a decision to go on the offensive. “I saw that I am left alone and there are a lot of rubber bullets coming to me then they took me [into the van]. I was crying that day when l got inside the Hippo [large police van].”74 The group was taken to Lenasia police station and then to Pretoria court. She had thought, seeing as in her mind she had done nothing to break the law, that they were going to be dropped off in Thembelihle. To her disappointment, they were instead moved to the notorious Sun City, a prison known for harsh conditions and ruthless criminals. “It clicked, that is when I remembered that the rumours are saying it is very bad at Sun City.” Bontle arrived at Sun City: There was this passage and when we get there they undressed us like naked [and said] “Look at this board and stretch your legs,” so

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that they can check you. For me I had to ask them to put [me on] the other side because I did not want to be in the same place with the granny [who had creeped me out as she watched me come in] and they said, “no, one of you has to come this side,” and I agreed. They then gave us loaves of bread and I was very hungry. Then I thought the people that we were with in the holding cells have already been there for long, some time. After that the bread was taken by other people [in the cells] and we slept on empty stomachs and I was so hungry.75 Two women old enough to be grandmothers greeted her mischievously in the cell. “In the room that I was placed in there were only elderly people and they were busy pulling the blankets [from us] and there was nothing that l could do.” She further described a situation in which, “There was no comfort at all. I did not sleep well.”76 The next day, one woman who had been smoking threatened, “Hey you sister, you are mine.”77 As the group of arrested protestors sat down to eat in the kitchen, they heard a loudspeaker informing them that their lawyer had arrived. Finally, there was a sense of relief. “I was so happy,” she recollected, “to the extent that I could not even [finish] my food.”78 While in jail, Bontle and the others received regular visits from comrades of the okm and tcc. “They were right at our side and they did not disappoint us. Each and every day they came to visit us … I would say they were there for us.” Reflecting back on her arrest, she did not regret what she had done despite the traumatic experience. Because of the protest, she thought, “We [now] have electricity.” Back in Thembelihle, many of the residents did not seem to understand the significance of what had transpired. “It was like simply a joke to them.” “It might be a joke to you guys,” she told them, “but at the end if these government people [officials] do not fulfil our needs we will also go back there [again].” She resolved in her own mind that, “If our government does not end up giving us what we want, as an individual I will not stop to fight for my rights.”79 As the series of demonstrations continued to wax and wane in the midst of the ongoing siege, promises were made to the community that the mec would arrive, but he did not do so. On 17 March 2015 – three weeks since the start of the protest – intimidation, arrests, and detentions continued in the area, and another man was shot at point-blank range by the police with rubber bullets. One resident who witnessed the shooting thought the man being fired on might not survive; fortunately, he did.

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The Gauteng provincial government, in the meantime, accused community leaders of abusing platforms for engagement. But the tides of power soon shifted.

conclusion: transformation from below or development saints from above? Left-wing forces intervened to provide solidarity in the context of the police crackdown and siege. In combination with the dlf, the Right to Know Campaign (r2k), and the secc, bail funds were collected to support and release those arrested. The United Front (uf) called for “concrete and active solidarity with the people of Thembelihle.”80 The residents had not given up, but they also now had external support from sympathetic and progressive forces. In this context, the anc government decisively turned the tables in favour of the Thembelihleans by finally promising to upgrade the settlement. On the one hand this was a victory to be celebrated. Once a top-down process of development which effectively entailed eviction, the immediate or imminent process of development was now determined by the dispossessed. In this new vision, government policy stated that residents could remain on the land that they occupied and their electricity connections were no longer criminalized. A sizable amount, about r323 million, would electrify 7,000 homes.81 In what appeared at face value to be ordinary people, the poor, having their voices heard in the most meaningful of ways, these finances became decentralized from provincial and national government and the City of Johannesburg to reflect the interest of Thembelihleans. People, even children, died from lack of access to electricity, both as a result of needing to use wood stoves and, later, from makeshift connections which left live wires strewn across the settlement. A heroic, fifteen years of intensive struggle, marches, memorandums, legal support, prison sentences, and appearances at court, and finally the change had, at least on paper and in policy, come. But there is little evidence to suggest that working-class organizations whose rank and file risked their lives and faced long-term imprisonment emerged stronger in the aftermath of this victory. Neither the okm nor a broader anti-capitalist political force, the United Front, gained significantly greater traction. The paradox is that mainstream political parties (namely the eff and anc) would each cash in on the victory. How did this happen? This chapter has sought to demonstrate that popular mobilization of the people, combined with their long-standing brav-

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ery and commitment to democratic organizing, translated to shifts in government policy. One activist intimately involved in the electricity struggle proudly reflected, “The electricity that we have today in Thembelihle it is not something that came easily on a silver plate or on a silver spoon.” It is not as if the government said, “here is electricity.” Instead, he summarized, “we fought for it.”82 On 24 April 2015, a historic meeting took place between mec Jacob Mamabolo, Daniel Bovu (the City of Johannesburg mmc for Housing), and the tcc. The outcome was a commitment. The Gauteng Provincial Government Department of Human Settlements released a statement claiming they “have assured the people of Thembelihle today that the provision of basic services such as water and electricity will be accelerated as a response to pressing issues in the community.”83 Jacob Mamabolo indicated, “I am pleased violence is a thing of the past and that through dialogue and sitting around the table we are starting to see positive results.”84 In the anc’s view, the voice of the people had been heard and therefore protest action and contentious politics were no longer necessary. The ruling anc effectively owned a struggle that they were not only not a part of but which they had actively fought against and criminalized until the masses of people in Thembelihle presented them with no other option. In the lead up to the local government elections in mid-2016, then President Jacob Zuma told a cheering crowd on his arrival at the settlement: I’m very happy that the mayor has explained why we are here and what is happening. This is a formula that I think must be adopted by the country nationally. Because it helps us to address energy whilst we are addressing other [basic] services. Because energy is a necessity. I want to agree with the mayor that … if we call it other names certainly we are criminalizing our people who are in need of energy. So we can say, “they connect themselves. They just connect” [crowd and Zuma laugh]. And what now the City of Johannesburg has done is to connect them as a city with authority. Because they connect themselves whether there is authority or not [crowd and Zuma laughing].85 In essence, Zuma appeared to have listened graciously to the dispossessed, creating a momentary participatory partnership, albeit one geared toward toeing the neoliberal line. The upgrading of Thembelihle, initially excluded, became part of a national strategy by the anc to appear propoor, which no doubt resulted from other areas across the country engaging in protest action around the electricity crisis. Other informal

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settlements, including the nearby Lawley station in Lenasia as well as Setjwetla in Alexandra, would also be electrified. In the previous chapter, residents demanded that then anc President Jacob Zuma come down from his ivory-tower office to speak to the masses and promise to intervene. This suggests that one must be careful what you wish for because eventually he did. For a fleeting moment, he was Thembelihle’s “development saint.” Zuma swiftly repented for his sins of silencing the voices at the grassroots of those crying out for development and of demonizing the so-called theft by those who connected their electricity using makeshift wires. The president visited Thembelihle on the eve of South Africa’s local government elections in 2016 to address residents and to turn the tables. He was now, borrowing the words of Rahnema, “a repentant saint … ready to amend, to work in a new fashion with the poor, and even to learn from them.”86 Thembelihleans appeared initially to readily, and understandably so, accept this proposed partnership. Julius Malema, the commander in chief of the opposition eff, also visited Thembelihle again on 27 October 2015 to offer words of solidarity and to campaign for the upcoming elections as well. He effectively implied the economic exclusion faced by Thembelihle’s population as they left Thembelihle in buses to visit the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the Chamber of Mines. The march was potent, including buses from Thembelihle, leading a group of 30,000 people.87 And so, while President Zuma and his party granted the people participation, the eff provided a viable electoral vehicle through which to pressure the anc in power to deliver. According to one activist, Mbatha, who reflected on the relationship between electoral politics and popular mobilization in his community, “Maybe they [the majority of residents] do not really understand … they think the anc is doing something [bringing electricity] forgetting how many years they have been fighting for this.” They attend tcc meetings, he explained, “because the same [anc] councillor has failed them several times when they went to him in need.” Attempting to gauge ordinary residents views when it comes to political support and voting, Siphiwe put forward the case that they see the anc delivering to working-class communities in other places and believe that they may be able to do the same for them. “The way the okm was small,” he reflected, “was focusing on the City of Johannesburg only, so they [residents] wanted some strong position to push the anc to do the right thing.”88 The suggestion here is that the tcc, in the minds of ordinary people in the community, is fighting for the anc to heed to their demands, rather

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than for the tcc/okm to take power. That helps explain why activists whose lived experience with police repression was detailed in the previous subsections tend to be vilified rather than celebrated more generally in the community. It is thankless work. And so in the local government elections of 2016, it was perhaps no surprise, following the electrification of the settlement, that the okm received about half the percentage of the total votes it had obtained in 2011.89 Support for the okm therefore experienced a major decline following the electrification of the settlement. Perhaps what was needed, in the minds of residents, was less confrontation and more delivery or, in other words, more okm and less anc. But the election results showed something different. In fact the ruling party’s electoral support has declined more generally. Referring to a range of areas participating in the 2014 national elections, including Thembelihle, Runciman argues that “the level of support for the anc in protest ‘hotspots’ is not as stable as previous analysis … has suggested.”90 The anc’s percentage of votes declined most notably (as it did in other places with a strong opposition, such as Marikana) in the 2016 local government elections, in favour of the eff. Having received 59.4 per cent of the votes in 2011, the anc received only 50.3 per cent while the eff marked its first local government elections by receiving 18.2 per cent of the votes in 2016. The okm shrank from 12.3 to 6.3 per cent, although it is unclear exactly the extent to which the okm lost votes to the anc or eff in Thembelihle itself.91 It is also important to highlight that the people of Marikana never downed tools for townships and informal settlements struggling for a better life elsewhere in the country. #FeesMustFall, which witnessed the largest student demonstrations in the post-apartheid period in 2015 and 2016, did not shut down educational institutions or join in meaningful solidarity activities with the people of Thembelihle when they engaged in occupations. In this context, activists pay dividends for participation, often with very meagre returns: without an adequate counter-power, the oppressed appear to become trapped in a vicious cycle of state repression, broken promises, and occasional paltry concessions. “Like the first disciples and followers of a new religion,” mainstream parties in South Africa work on the assumption that the experience of oppression “need not be attributed to the ideology of development [itself].”92 Since as far back as 2011, the people of Thembelihle had called then President Jacob Zuma and former anc Youth League President Julius Malema to speak with them. It is perhaps not inaccurate to suggest that the people were looking for their saviour in the form of an individual rather than seeking slow and

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dedicated change through their collective formations. Zuma and the anc government swiftly took credit, claiming the intervention and decision to listen to the oppressed as their own. In the 2016 local government elections, Malema’s eff would capture further votes from the anc but also, evidence suggests, from the tcc’s socialist political party, the okm.

conclusion Marcel Paret, who has drawn comparisons between Thembelihle and other working-class areas that have revolted, has correctly asserted that “While the okm did make broader appeals to working-class struggle and socialist transformation, its popular support rested primarily on the narrow, place-based demands of Thembelihle residents.”93 The chapters thus far have demonstrated that participatory forms of governance were shaped meaningfully by political and social struggles. There was also a shift from the power of collective action, through relatively democratic occupation, to incorporation into policy. Institutionalization is, in this way, corrosive to democratic participation. While the voices of the dispossessed have been inscribed into policy on the one hand, they have been silenced on the broader political terrain on the other. Mainstream theories of participatory governance mistakenly pitch these and other major policy changes as “true charity” which “consists in a … dialogue or intercourse with the poor” not a “condescension over the poor.”94As Rahnema foresaw thirty years ago in the context of the participation boom of the late ’80s and ’90s, “Major projects of change from above generally represent an attempt, by those very forces under threat, to contain and redirect change, with a view to adapting it to their own interests, whenever possible with the victims’ participation … This is how,” he urged us to consider, “the real authors of most revolutions are, sooner or later, robbed of the changes they have provoked, and ultimately victimized by the professional ideologues and agitators acting on their behalf.”95 Activists in Thembelihle risk their lives, are imprisoned, and their children are traumatized yet many reflect proudly on how they engaged in direct action in order to make concrete changes in their own community. The paradox is that while mainstream political parties, espousing neoliberalism, may cash in on grassroots struggles, popular participation nevertheless remains a fundamental ingredient in the recipe for working-class liberation.

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6 The Struggle within the Struggle

Participatory governance is, in theory, a step closer to the state than social movements, but given the reformist character of its praxis, it is often a distant world away from uncovering its anti-capitalist potential. “Once a tool for protestors contesting authority of hierarchical organizations,” write Edward Walker, Michael McQuarrie, and Caroline Lee in their introduction to Democratizing Inequalities, in which they debate whether or not “participation [is] now a tool for the creation of authority.”1 Craig Calhoun, who wrote the foreword to that volume, further questions the extent to which it serves to “depoliticize conflict” and to “domesticate” radical social movements.2 This chapter examines the internal dynamics of struggle in Thembelihle, while re-assessing the recent radical literature on participatory organization. Mainstream literature, as I sought to demonstrate in the first two chapters, seeks poor and working-class voices (and at times middle-class and elites’ voices) in the design and implementation of policy and programs within the neoliberal state. However, it is also necessary to advance beyond the blanket conclusion that the project of participation has fundamentally been neoliberalized. As much as celebrating participation and crowning its practices with a halo is not helpful,3 neither is it useful to designate all traces of it (or of voice) as malign or authoritarian. Reformist, state-driven approaches seek to manage conflict, but popular participation may be scaled up and arguably provides the focal point through which capitalism may be challenged or overthrown. While participation may serve as a mechanism for top-down control and exclusion, we must extend the limits of the current debate in order to consider the ways in which it may hold the potential to liberate the dispossessed from oppressive systems of power. This is the process of self-emancipation, through which the working class, in Marx’s vision, “have nothing to lose but their chains.”4

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According to Barker “the ‘class struggle’ is fought not simply between movements and their obvious opponents, but also within them [movements].”5 Communities are not homogeneous and neither are grassroots organizations, which emerge out of them. The participation paradox explores what happens when participatory governance is viewed not only through the eyes of the (neoliberal) state but also through the lens of democratic grassroots organizations and social movements rooted within the most advanced, conscientized sections of the dispossessed in places where revolts exist. Perhaps nowhere is the dialectical process of tyranny and transformation in relation to participatory development and governance more pronounced than in Thembelihle. Participation is on the one hand a tool to maintain the hegemony of the neoliberal ruling party, but it is also a method to contest the legitimacy of authority and to bend the rules in favour of indigenous people marginalized from the city. This chapter distinguishes between the discursive arena or field which underpins the People’s Parliament (introduced in chapter 3) and the tcc itself. While it is arguably the case, as suggested in the previous chapter, that the vast majority of the community members have understandably been relatively placated by the carrot and stick strategy presented by the anc-led state, the same cannot be said for the executive leadership of the tcc: these are socialist “mediators” in the Freirean sense, strategizing for radical social change in the midst of state repression. Activists continue to build networks with other surrounding areas, nationally, and, to a lesser extent, amongst the international working class more generally. “The tcc see their struggle,” according to Ngwane, “as having a goal beyond [merely] getting a house, important as this is in the lives of shack dwellers.” Even within the committee itself, the ideological terrain is itself contested. At one meeting which Ngwane himself observed, Baba Makama, a longstanding and vocal committee member who recently passed away, emphasized, “All I want is a brick house, then I will have peace.” The “conscientized” section within the meeting later laughed because, according to Ngwane, “the militants knew that this was certainly not ‘the position.’” 6 Nevertheless, vocalizing this desire was significant since it reflected the broader feeling of the so-called masses in Thembelihle. The twin aspect of the activists’ potential for achieving an anti-capitalist alternative lies in the fact that they both keep in touch with the everyday experiences of people such as Baba Makama but also are aware that “The source of the problem for tcc leaders is capitalism, a system of exploitation.” For a significant portion of those consistently at the forefront of both militant action and the slow grind of regular executive and occasional mass meetings, Ngwane

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deduced, based on his nearly two decades of direct involvement, that “this position is ingrained in their thinking and everyday activism.”7 Understanding the dynamics of popular participation as spatial practices means that these are “sites that are constantly in transformation as well as potential arenas of transformation.”8 The People’s Parliament, which represents the ideas of the masses struggling at the margins of society for a better life, shapes and is shaped by a small group of militants in the tcc. Whereas “invited” spaced tend to be understood as emanating from the state, they also emerge from below. The committee “invites” residents to participate in determining the strategic and tactical direction of the community in the face of exclusion from formalized processes. There exists a dialectical relationship whereby “spaces come to be defined by those who are invited into them, as well as by those doing the inviting.”9 Participatory processes in Thembelihle reflect the potential for agents (on the inside or the outside) to shape struggles in particular directions through leadership skills and qualities where the leader acts as “both sculptor and marble.”10 Johnson argues that “democratic leadership is a conversation, spoken within the movement, sustained by leader and follower, concerning the goals both can agree to pursue, pragmatically, in light of their changing interpretations of circumstances and experience, and the means to achieve those goals against an adversary.”11

aluta continua: an ethnography of direct action In Thembelihle, there remains a small, arguably growing, group of committed people who self-identify as revolutionaries intent on changing the system. They are not duped by the intervention and promises of the ruling anc to upgrade the informal settlement and provide electricity. When then President Jacob Zuma came in mid-2016, the masses may have celebrated (see chapter 5), but the militants saw the bigger picture. They understood that the anc was not a pro-poor organization and were adamant that they could be done no favour. The land, in their minds, was in fact rightfully theirs, as was the electricity. It was simply being restored by the anc. Simphiwe Zwane complained after Zuma’s visit that he had “switched on three houses in a thirty minute visit.” She further described to the media that this was “cheap vote-mongering because the electrification project is far from complete.”12 According to Nhlakanipho, a spokesperson of the tcc, “There are 9,000 stands in Thembelihle and several shacks on each stand. We have been fighting hard for this since March

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last year, and electrification began only in October [2015], but it’s going too slowly.”13 Critically, the anc lost its grip on the metros, including Johannesburg, in the 2016 local government elections, which meant that the mayor overseeing Thembelihle, which falls within the City of Johannesburg, was Herman Mashaba from the opposition Democratic Alliance. This section focuses on the response of government officials to a memorandum addressed to the mayor in order to explain the multi-faceted character of the profoundly democratic structures of the tcc, which are centred on three sets of meetings: executive, general, and mass meetings: 1. Executive meeting: meets every Friday to discuss the programme for Saturday. 2. General meeting: meets every Saturday. If there are issues effecting the community, these are taken to a mass meeting. About twenty to forty residents attend, mainly members of the tcc. 3. Mass meeting (known as People’s Parliament): the community is mobilized through loud-hailing and word of mouth when the community has an issue to discuss which the general meeting cannot take on its own. The tcc is mandated to implement the decisions taken at the mass meetings, but they do not go to the masses empty handed. In the absence of their own ideas about the way forward, these leaders risk becoming neutral arbiters with little to no say in the transformation of their community. Based on their vast experiences over an extensive period of time, they therefore tend to highlight solutions. Political schooling, reading groups, and education are key components of executive and members meetings. As 2017 was coming to a close, several issues concerning community development in Thembelihle remained unresolved. Broken promises appeared to be on the horizon. While poles were erected to electrify the area, the aforementioned disagreement around the existence and extent of dolomitic land remained. The government continued to insist that dolomite was present in the area, preventing it from being further upgraded. It became clear that local development – upgrading of the settlement – would not take place as promised. Sibusiso reflected upon the extent to which they were short-changed in this regard: The sad part of it is that they only provided one thing that they said they will give and the sad part of it was that they [said they] will also

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provide solar panels and gas stoves … [the] electricity will serve certain watts and they will give the solar panels which will not go off because it is the energy that works from the sun, for our tvs, radio, this and that. They never provided that. They took a decision, them, with the current councillor, that they have seen the budget [and concluded that], “it is too much for us to do that.”14 On 30 October 2017, a few dozen residents hired minibus taxis to protest outside the mayor’s offices in Braamfontein and to hand over a memorandum. The memorandum stipulated that the mayor should respond within three working days.15 As may have been expected, this did not happen. Members of the tcc, particularly its leaders, believe that it is necessary to keep communication channels with government officials open, despite the likelihood that they will not provide substantive responses. The December holidays passed and the tcc received a letter addressed to Nhlakanipho, the secretary, who had personally signed the memorandum. On Friday 12 January 2018, when the tcc reopened, the committee could sense that their concerns were again falling on deaf ears. They had requested a direct response from the mayor, but the letter was signed by Raymond Arends, at the Office of the Speaker to the Johannesburg Council, who received the memorandum. The document was in different fonts, Nhlakanipho’s name spelled incorrectly, and parts of it were clearly cut and pasted.16 It appeared to the committee that the mayor in fact did not receive the memorandum, which was addressed to him, but it was rather dealt with in his office. Without ongoing intervention, delay tactics would continue, again preventing pressing community issues from being resolved: the future of Thembelihle, which is people’s access to livelihoods, their children’s schools, their jobs, among others, as well as their sense of being home, were at stake. At this executive meeting of the tcc, three possibilities emerged which would, following standard procedure, be taken to the general meeting the following day, which was a Saturday: 1. Occupy the offices of the mayor in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. 2. Engage in protest or, in other words, take an occupation to the street. 3. Do both: engage in protest and occupy the offices.17 The next day approximately forty people attended the general meeting that took place at what is called sa Block Community Hall. The executive

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explained to those in attendance what they had discussed the previous day, detailing how the government had responded as well as the three possible actions the community could take to put pressure on the authorities. Another alternative emerged, which was to continue ongoing negotiations directly with the mayor, so there were now four options. Since the meeting could not come to a consensus, a vote by show of hands was necessary: the majority of people (about fifteen) indicated that they wished to occupy the mayor’s office and a resolution was then taken to do so.18 In this manner, they would not need to mark out hundreds of people in a heated battle on the ground with police; instead, relatively few people would be needed to enter the offices of the mayor until he offered a satisfactory answer. Power would potentially shift to the residents, albeit momentarily, without great risk of arrest. As per the usual practice, the position discussed at the general meeting needed to be brought to the mass meeting, the People’s Parliament, so that it could be deliberated on with the broader community. Those in attendance at the general meeting draft the agenda for the mass meeting and decide which person will speak about each item: a chairperson is also nominated on the day to help ensure the smooth flowing of this major assembly. This is necessary since the mass meeting involves not only members of the tcc but the community in general. Members contributed money to announce the mass meeting on Sunday (petrol money to drive a car around the settlement and batteries for the hailer were amongst the necessities). Mass meetings in Thembelihle can be lively affairs. This one, on Sunday 14 January 2018, consisted of approximately 1,000 people stretching across the taxi rank and down the edges of the street which borders the settlement. Executive members – including those who were selected at the general meeting to bring items to the mass meeting – arrived about one hour early at three in the afternoon, “to remind ourselves about the agenda and see if we still remembered what we talked about [on the previous day].” The meeting then began at four p.m.: [The] agenda is presented by the chairperson and then speakers come in. [A] Comrade … was assigned to talk about the issue of the protest or occupation or doing them both or negotiating. We talk, give the proposal [forth to those present at the meeting] and allow them to comment. Normally there will be five to ten people saying what we should be doing and there will be different views, but at the end we go through the process of voting with a show of hands. [We ask] Who

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supports the motion of protest? Normally, we would count, but we didn’t count. We couldn’t say to them that we should have a sit-in or occupying. But the massive majority of people were talking and saying we should go out into the streets. We asked if we should start it now or early in the morning. Majority say wake up at three [a.m.], start at four.19 One resident reportedly told the crowd gathered at the mass meeting, “I was born here and I am now thirty-three and there is no movement [regarding community issues] so let’s go to the streets!”20 It appeared that it was either now or never. Direct action or non-violent civil disobedience in the form of an occupation of the streets was therefore to take place in the early hours of Monday morning. It was agreed that children would be allowed to attend school, but employees would be encouraged to stay away from work and be part of the protests. The main road enclosing Thembelihle would be shut with rocks, tires, and rubbish, preventing people in the surrounding community from going to work or transporting goods.

the three-day occupation begins At three in the morning on 15 January, as had historically been the case, men in particular began to organize the occupation. According to one resident, “We call each other. We met, three of us, and we went to other comrades houses to tell them that it is time. We wake up the community with whistles and vuvuzelas singing.” The occupation lasted for three days (15–17 January). On the first day, engagements began between the tcc and the police, who indicated that they were calling the mayor who was busy elsewhere. They therefore requested the tcc representatives to wait for thirty minutes. Time passed until it was about six p.m. – the numbers had died down, but some people remained singing in the streets and there was talk about the nearby settlement, Precast, joining in the protest. One of the members of the executive remembers that they “cautioned each other not to sleep at our own place because anytime police might come and pick you up.”21 Activists such as these are all too familiar with police, rather than local government officials, becoming directly involved in their attempts at engaging fruitfully with local government officials. Discussions also took place amongst activists about how to approach the police, who they informed that they should not be involved in issues concerning delivery

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or development since “their objective,” in the words of one activist, “is to deal with crime,” not protest.22 A young man, who I will call Lesley, was not a formal member of the tcc at the time, but he became part of the 2018 contentious actions as they unfolded, literally around his dwelling. He had been staying in Thembelihle since 2001 – one year prior to the attempted evictions – and worked for Koogan Plastic between 2004 and 2008. For the following two years he was unemployed. During 2011 and 2012 he worked at a garage, as petrol attendant, in the nearby extension five of Lenasia.23 In 2014, Lesley wasn’t working, and he said to himself, “Let me keep myself busy with something” and began to attend tcc meetings. He had been given anc membership forms previously but never filled them out. He chose to invest his time in tcc meetings in particular because, in his words, the organization “is direct to Thembelihle.” He recalled, “That’s when I developed the passion to become an activist … up to now I’m working but hey I’m an activist in fact, yah, so now my focus now is to become a politician because of the life that I’m living, of helping people.”24 This politics, or politician, of another type is one that challenges the dominant orthodoxy. Instead of serving the established order, it seeks to challenge it by mobilizing the community to achieve social justice. He was a paid-up member from 2014 to 2016, but by the time of the protest in 2018 he had stopped being intimately involved. “I’m no more a member because a member is a person who renew[s] his membership every year … even though I didn’t resign.” He stopped attending meetings on a regular basis but kept in touch informally with the organization’s activists. Of course, living next to and perhaps being friends with people at the forefront of struggle within one’s own community means that he was never fully divorced from local politics. Lesley explained that he maintained an attraction towards a particular kind of politics associated with practical change and direct action: I still maintain a relationship with the organization because [of the] one of the militancy, meaning some of the militant comrades of the tcc I still meet with them a lot and then they’re open to me and I’m open to them … those militant people they’re focusing on the objectives of Thembelihle … I can still take myself as a Thembelihle Crisis Committee member because of anytime when they want to do something, any initiative, I’m able to join them and they don’t push me out and when there are meetings, they allow me to talk.25

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Lesley was unaware of the ongoing process through which the tcc was attempting to get a response from the government. He did not attend the meetings leading up to the 2018 protest, so when Sunday night came, he was going to bed in order to prepare for work on Monday. His plans changed, however: It was in the morning. I’m sure they [groups of activists] arrive to four [before four a.m.] … I heard about the strike [at that moment through them]. As you know that if you are a worker and you have heard about the strike [but don’t join], you become the ligundwane [rat or “strike breaker”]. Then to find out that when I finished bathing [they had arrived], usually I’m not used to bath at that time but I have already bathed. After [I was] done bathing and preparing myself to leave, hee! They fetch me, “Hey!” then hayi! [no!], I didn’t have a problem with that, I went with them and we started everything.26 Others who would take part in the early 2018 occupation were relatively new to the executive of the tcc, including Siphiwe Bembe (hereafter referred to as Bembe) who was the treasurer. Born on 4 February 1983, in Mpumalanga, she was thirty years old at the time. She first visited Thembelihle to see her brother in 2005 when she was in grade eleven. While completing matric the following year she again saw her brother, and in 2008 she became a permanent resident of the informal settlement. Bembe recalls that she “realized that I had to find accommodation since I was in Johannesburg for opportunities so I looked for a job and [then] worked while staying here.” She’s presently a student-teacher at the nearby Ithubalethu Secondary School for grades ten to twelve in economics.27 Her brother had been an active member in the tcc since she moved to the settlement. According to her own assessment: I didn’t understand [then] what it was all about … and seeing my brother there I became involved though I was not sure what I was doing until 2012 when I became actively involved [it is then that I truly] understood what it was all about … Growing up in Mpumalanga my parents were members of a certain political party and I realized as I grew that there was nothing tangible that the parents benefitted from their organization. When in Joburg … I later realized that the tcc is not based on political affiliation but it’s about fighting for the needs of the community. I felt that it’s one

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movement that needed to see development happening and it’s always hands on. For me it was not motivated by personal gain or profit but it was about the people.28 Bembe echoed a wide range of individuals who had at some point in their lives played a leading role in the committee. “For every decision that takes place in Thembelihle people are involved,” she said, “so I felt there was no need for me to join a political party but [I should be active in] the tcc since it’s a movement that deals with people’s daily issues.”29 Although the government had promised in writing in April 2015 to develop Thembelihle, residents, including Bembe, had been growing increasingly weary in this regard. Despite the fact that electricity poles had now been pitched (seemingly permanently), bringing power to the entire settlement, the government continued to point to dolomite as a key reason that further development in the form of housing and water supplies could not be delivered. As the carefully woven narratives that underpin this entire book have sought to demonstrate, the 2018 occupation (like those which came before it) did not happen in a vacuum. According to Bembe’s 2018 recollection, “It is [now] undecided whether Thembelihle will ever develop or not.” The community’s build-up to major protest action resulted from their exclusion from formal processes of communication: “As the tcc we decided to follow policies and procedures where we tried to be ‘civilised’ and tried to talk to government with the language that [we thought at the time] they will understand: communicating via emails, phone calls, letters, but there was no response.”30 The provincial government had indicated that dolomite was a problem and so the tcc responded by commissioning their own geologists to test the area. Still, there was no meaningful response. “It’s been years,” Bembe lamented. Her conclusion was that “The government is playing hide and seek. No one is coming out with the report, but year in and year out Thembelihle doesn’t have a budget.” In her view the basic human rights of Thembelihleans were being denied since “The constitution says service delivery is our birth right.” After seemingly countless attempts and at least two marches to the municipality to remind officials of the pressing issues, including one on 30 October 2017, another strategy was deemed necessary. Previously they had been patient, indicating, “It’s fine, give them time.” However, as the narratives presented earlier have also demonstrated, the mood shifted, and at the mass meeting on Sunday 14 January, residents decided to wait in the streets the following morning until the mayor himself came to address them.31

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According to Mbembe’s account: They [residents] said, “no, we need the mayor.” We have tried all the relevant offices and they are not helping so we need the mayor. We are going to wait for the mayor on the street. We are not going to fight with anyone, we are just going to sit there until the mayor comes. So that was their decision and as their followers – ’coz in fact they are our bosses –we listened to them, we went to the street and sat until they [government] lied to us again.32 “Nothing for us, without us” is the chorus of tcc leaders: without ordinary community members, a major action or demonstration has no use. It can neither be successful nor can it draw in large numbers of people. In contrast to the dominant notion in mainstream politics, that leaders exist in order to tell ordinary followers what to do, tcc’s executive tend to be driven by a mandate that positions them as servants of their own community. When the police arrived on the scene, community leaders asked them to call the mayor to address them. In this way, the protest action could cease and discussions around their demands could reopen. The mayor did not come and in his place they sent Raymond Arends. A decision regarding the way forward and, if necessary, a report back from the official needed to take place: a further mass meeting, following the one which took place the previous Sunday, was called. The tcc executive told the protestors: “You want[ed] the mayor and the mayor sent his advisory office delegate.” They echoed from the large group congregated at Park Station that this was unsatisfactory: “Nope! Who is that? We don’t want to see Arends! We want the mayor himself. We want to tell him what has been happening in Thembelihle for the last thirty-five to forty years. We don’t want the councillor or the regional director [or anyone else other than the mayor]!”33 Arends reportedly told the crowd that they would try to make a plan with the mayor. In fact, Bembe and other leaders had been offered conflicting and incomprehensible stories. The police told them that the mayor would come on Thursday (in three days), but when they called the mayor’s office the representatives knew nothing of the sort. They again requested to see evidence that the mayor had agreed, but this was not forthcoming. The leadership in particular then realized that they were being misled, lied to, taken for granted. According to Bembe, they decided not to give the full information regarding this deception to the com-

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munity for fear that this would further aggravate what was becoming an uncontrollable situation: When you are a leader you are like a coach. Even if you see that your team is not going to make it you still encourage them that “you can do it guys,” yet you know there is nothing they can do. So other community members were not there [in the discussions]. It was us the executive and when sending the message to the community you have to be strategic. You can’t pour petrol into the fire so we went and I can say we lied. That’s why I am saying I was very angry because when the police look at us they look at people who endangered their lives [when in fact we are doing the opposite]. We lied just to contain the situation. It was very difficult.34 They decided not to give two different, conflicting stories to the community. Instead, they presented the meeting with two options: wait, in protest, until the mayor comes or go home until Thursday (when they would supposedly meet the mayor). The meeting decided that residents should wait a few hours. They told each other that there will be, “no more meetings, no more boardroom sittings, nothing, we are going to solve our issues [right] here.”35

the state fans the fire One might expect that in the context of a disgruntled community engaging in direct action, officials would seek to negotiate or, at least, to promote relative peace. Perhaps the discursive arena of the government, underpinned by a perception that the country’s citizens should sit back and wait patiently decades for their turn, could no longer withstand the legitimate cries of the masses. Instead of negotiations moving forward, more police joined the action. According to Bembe’s recollection, “The shoot-out started and the people were being shot by the police.” The attack was such that, in her experience, “You couldn’t even breath.”36 Activist after activist present at the scene reported that there was a much stronger tear-gas used on the day than that which is traditionally used in the South African context. People were becoming sick. The fumes had entered into the shacks on the outskirts of the settlement. The activists understood that they had the right to protest and yet police were coming to their homes to shoot them while they were expressing this very right.

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The community, perhaps predictably, did not respond positively to this development and mistakenly believed that the tcc had sold them out – by calling the police to thwart the protest. Mbembe was amongst the leadership now caught between a rock and a hard place with disgruntled protestors on the one side and police on the other: “We are just messengers. We always try to communicate with the community and we also communicate with the police. But the crowd became very, very angry when instead of seeing the mayor coming, we saw extra force. So police started shooting and the crowd became violent.”37 In a display of peaceful motives, still other community members who had closed the road were redirecting traffic away from the demonstration so that cars would not be smashed or caught in the crossfire on their drive past the settlement. The community was promised over the phone that the mayor would come within the next thirty minutes to an hour. At approximately 1:45 p.m., more police arrived, leading the community to think that they were escorting the mayor. The protestors shifted in an orderly fashion out of the street. Three black cars emerged, but, like the mineworkers of Marikana, the residents’ wait was in vain. Instead of sending the appropriate official to negotiate, police were again sent to quell dissent. No talks would take place. “After that it was very sad when the police just started shooting at people and it turned violent and the people were even coming to us the leaders saying, ‘You said we must move away from the street and to come and wait for the mayor here and now you are bringing us [to the police]’ and it was like we were the ones selling them to the police.”38 Bembe believed at that point in time that her life was in danger. She had tried to intervene between the two sides but became targeted on both ends: by the community as a “sell-out” and by the police as a rabble-rouser of the community. One person reflected the emergent sense in the midst of the skirmish when they told her, “We are dead! The conditions we are living in indicate that we are dead and now they are shooting at us for no apparent reason so the best way [is that] we rather die in the hands of the police.”39 To a certain extent it became life or death: if not now by bullet or arrest, then later when individuals returned to their shacks they would experience, from their own perspective, what it is like to no longer be alive. A significant group amongst the protestors decided therefore not to back down while under siege. They faced the police head-on. The police hurled tear gas canisters into the air. According to Bembe’s account:

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The police were harming us by the teargas that was thrown … there was a two-day old baby and we ended up losing that baby as the community. And as that woman was trying to come to the police while carrying the baby to ask them to take her to the hospital since there were no cars [to take the baby ourselves] they were shooting. And it angered me as a woman. It was something else. That’s why the community said we are going to fight back and if this is the mayor[‘s response] let him kill us. So they fought back and it was now outright violence.40 The clash continued for two to three hours. In their minds, the police that were supposed to be there to protect them, were instead shooting at them. A militant group sought to push the police back to the other side of the road so that the rest of the protestors could make their way safely back into the settlement, inside their homes. Their logic was that, “You cannot come and kill me in my house just for telling you that I don’t have water, I don’t have a toilet … I have a stinking toilet next to my door and you come and shoot me?”41 The more recent and fresh a contentious event is that an activist partakes in, perhaps the more vivid its portrayal becomes in an oral history such as this. Bembe reiterated in the interview which took place in April, a couple months after this 2018 occupation, “As the tcc our policy is we are going to channel our grievances to the government even if it means sitting on the road for two weeks.” After literally decades of residents waiting, organizing, hoping, and living precariously, it had become high time for officials to come address the community. However, “Some people,” Bembe pointed out, “take advantage of the protests.”42

counter-xenophobic mobilization Thembelihle has an impressive history of defending the community from xenophobic attacks especially between 2008 and 2011. The tcc, in fact, was awarded the “Mkhaya Migrants Award” for the “Most Integrated Community” in South Africa.43 Leaders of the community literally endure sleepless nights to ensure that criminal elements, in particular theft from shops of foreigners, do not distract from the main objectives of Thembelihleans. No doubt because of the socialist framing of the tcc, this became a key feature during the 2018 occupation as well. Nombulelo Nyezi (Nombulelo), a fiery young activist, was among those at the forefront of these preventative measures in the late hours of the night and into the fol-

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lowing morning. Nombulelo was born on 15 October 1985 in Pimville, Soweto. She said, “[I] came to Thembelihle in 1990 and grew up here ever since so Thembelihle became a place that I love and I forgot about Soweto. Soweto for me doesn’t exist.” She is the youngest in a family of seven and has two children. She explained that although she arrived at Thembelihle at the age of six, she was then (in 2018) thirty-two years old and yet little or nothing had changed in her view. Nombulelo and many other residents who had been living in the area literally for decades would occasionally think to themselves, “What’s actually wrong here? Why is there not change? Because this is the place that you want to see change.”44 Friends and family would ask her why she was so attached to Thembelihle and not staying in the nearby relatively middle-class township area of Pimville, Soweto. She reasoned: I want to push for change here ’coz it doesn’t help me to run away and go to Pimville while people [here] are still facing the same challenges. It just doesn’t make sense and Thembelihle will always be Thembelihle. I grew up there and this is my hood [laughs]. And it has taught me a lot. It taught me to understand people’s lives, to interact with people and to do a lot of community work. To touch people’s lives and also get involved and have a say in making decisions concerning my hood … I wouldn’t have asked for a better hood despite the fact that it’s not glamourous and all that: the shacks. But I am proud that I come from these dusty streets of Thembelihle. These are the streets that contributed [for me] to be this woman that I am. And I give myself a pat on the back that I have done well thanks to Thembelihle. Throughout the struggle, the hardships, and happiness and joys, the rollercoaster, I wouldn’t have been this strong young woman that I am, but it’s all thanks to Thembelihle … it has taught me to be streetwise and [the need for] humility.45 Nombulelo was not part of the immediate planning process for the January 2018 protest, but she understood what it was about. She was travelling back from the rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal from a visit to her family following the mass meeting on Sunday that made the decision to protest the following Monday. She told one of her comrades that, “God loves me, at least I am participating in this one.” She remembered, “When I arrived after five p.m. [on Sunday], I was told that ‘tomorrow, it’s on!’ [laughs] and then they woke up at four in the morning, but I didn’t wake up at four since I was tired … I joined them later during the day at the

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robots and tried to think how best we can handle the situation in terms of finding an amicable solution.”46 Even though, in her view, the officials, in particular the mayor, Mashaba, but also the police, took them as “fools as usual,” she thought it was necessary that the community “keep calm and give these people a chance.” Nombulelo summarized what transpired in the negotiations between the police and the tcc representatives: The community said [to the police] they were not budging until they gave them Mashaba [to speak to directly] and the reasons why they wanted him were stated. It’s like the police were reading from a script because they would come and listen but at the end of the day it was as if you said nothing, you are just talking kak [nonsense – literally, excrement] because their behaviour – they would come with the same tactics every time. They would say we want to talk to someone and then they would do that then strangely, next, a different cop would come and say, “I don’t know what’s happening here.” So these people were taking us as fools.47 Many of those protesting seemed to ask themselves how they could be satisfied with empty promises and “fool speak,” whereas there seemed to be no emerging potential for the delivery of basic services in the near future. Despite the fact that the protest was concerned mainly with delivery of basic services to the community, it nevertheless presented the risk of residents becoming involved in theft of shops or other criminality and in this instance they did so. Organizers responded by patrolling the streets preventing criminals from stealing from foreigners’ shops. As one activist put it, “We didn’t sleep that night because we needed to patrol the shops.”48 Some residents continued to burn tires, while others went to sleep. Nombulelo was amongst the patrollers that evening or being what she referred to as a “night rider.” She explained the nature of her involvement during the late hours of darkness. We got into a car volunteered by one of the Ethiopians and guarded all the shops in Thembelihle even if they [owners] had left. We went to the D section and saw boys looting the shops and my comrades and colleagues caught them and recovered the stuff and we let them go since we are not the police at the end of the day. We just wanted things back. We cannot take the law into our own hands so we let

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them be. But when we saw the police we went to them and reported the incident and the police was like hayi [no]: just leave them.49 They patrolled the four main sections of the settlement for each of the three nights of the protest. “I had to be there and be part of it. I couldn’t stay at home and have coffee. It was a great experience on my side even though I hated the running.” The theft from small shops, furniture and other stores need not be understood only as something which is done by “criminal” elements intent on destabilizing a reasonable society. In fact, it is the view of many of the former and present members of the tcc that society is not in a balance or equilibrium but is swayed heavily in favour of the rich, out of the hands of the Black majority. The capitalist liberal legal framework has been, to date, incapable of resolving the existing crisis in poor Black communities like Thembelihle. Nombulelo therefore adopts a street-smart, or what can be best described as a practical Marxist, approach to how goods, not only land, can and, in her view, should be distributed in society: There are shops that we looted there like the furniture there [pointing]. But I believe they just repossessed – they took whatever is ours [laughs out loud]. They have a right because being a Black child in this situation of ours there are a lot of things that need to be repossessed, but in the right way. They did nothing wrong but it’s just the way they did it there. Repossessing is a good thing in this country of ours, like land … We need to repossess. You have the right to get into the garage and take a car and go – you are repossessing what is yours. And you have each and every right – it’s your country – it’s your blood and sweat or else those cars were not even going to exist. Those cars have been made by Black people. Each and everything is being made by Black people, yet we can’t afford them as Blacks.50 While Nombulelo and others believed in the need for repossession, their view was that in this instance it was not done at the right time or place. It should occur, but not during a protest for basic services in the community since it distracts the public at large from the main objective of the community. So she and others believed that the looting of the shops was not legitimate and should be stopped directly by residents. Moreover, to take from the people who are serving the community directly (inside Thembelihle), in her view, is also problematic. During the dark hours of the night, Nombulelo had informal conversations with the peo-

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ple who were in the actual process of stealing from the shops. Some, perhaps most, were not the kind of dangerous criminals that one might have had in mind: The sad thing is that the people who were looting were small kids, one said he wanted to get eggs, the other pampers: stories that don’t really make sense if you listen to them. There was one woman just crying asking us if we had not seen her boyfriend who had gone to loot eggs [laughs]. These are some of the things that [make] you wonder what happened to the Black nation. Because these people were supposed to be at home with their baby and now the boyfriend had gone to loot and God knows [where he is now] and one asks themselves: what if he went there and ran into the crazy Somalians that shoot [thieves] in the head? And then what? Then she [his wife] would be a widow … and the child won’t have a dad.51

protest on pause: electoral politics and popular mobilization The attempts by leaders in the tcc to counter the criminal activities was effective to an extent, but in the end, as one activist lamented, “We had to call it off because of the criminality and looting of shops.”52 On Friday, five days since the start of the occupation, “we met as executive to decide what is going to happen next.” They agreed that “We need to sort out this mess before we can continue going ahead. So we paused the protest. People died, people are getting arrested, breaking the shops, shooting people.” A general meeting was held the following day to prepare for the mass meeting on Sunday which would provide the forum, the People’s Parliament, for hundreds of residents. The agenda was “Why are we protesting; Criminality; Arrests and people dead; and Way forward.” According to Mbatha, “We went there to try to share with them or remind them that this is what we are fighting for [a response from government], but as things are going, are we benefitting from people looting shops?” It was further asked, somewhat rhetorically, “are we supporting the looting of shops?” A few people who had some beer earlier that day said they were in support, but the vast majority indicated they were not. Instead, they concluded, those who looted should be arrested. It was also agreed that the protest should be suspended while they pushed further negotiations with the mayor and the City of Johannesburg. The protest was temporarily suspended.53 Since the dawn of the first local government elections in South Africa

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in 1999, a key feature of struggle by the residents of Thembelihle has been what they view as the failure of anc ward councillors listening to and addressing their immediate concerns. Ward Eight, which encompasses Thembelihle and nearby areas, has consistently been dominated by the anc, but, as has been suggested throughout this book, the tcc is the most consistently active organization in the community. The 2017 and 2018 demonstrations had been directed at the mayoral level, but local governance was nevertheless a key concern in the hearts and minds of ordinary residents. At the end of 2018, on Sunday 11 November 2018, at a mass meeting convened by the Thembelihle Crisis Committee, it was resolved that the community should initiate a program to relieve the anc councillor, Ezekiel Mosotho Tsotetsi, from his duties as Ward Eight councillor. South Africa’s December holiday passed and when the tcc executive reconvened for the first time in 2019, on Friday 11 January, this was on the agenda as the resolution appeared in the minutes from the previous meeting.54 Critically, it was noted that this was a popular concern within the community, so the tcc should therefore aim to intensify it. In other words, the tcc’s role would be to mobilize its forces in order to harness the power of the community. They wrote and printed a “Petition for the removal of the City of Johannesburg (coj) Ward 8 Councillor” that included space for signatories to put their name and surname, South African identity number, address, and signature. Referring to what was discussed during mass meeting held by the tcc the previous year, it indicated: The general feeling among us as community members is that Mr Tsotetsi does not align himself with his [own] mandate. He does not call regular public meetings as required, at least quarterly, to report on what is happening at council and to also get a mandate on issues to present at appropriate municipal structures. He interferes in matters better placed for administrative officials. He has been involved in questionable deals including a car purchase which led to his arrest and mysterious release. He was involved in unduly appropriating bricks for personal use from one construction site in the ward.55 Leaders within the tcc have consistently measured or sensed the level of commitment or the spirit with which the mass base (that is the community of Thembelihle) supports or does not support certain grievances. In the early 2000s it was obvious, since thousands of residents were opposed to the eviction, and in 2011 and 2015, electricity was the key item

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in the hearts and minds of residents. In other words, they have inculcated a culture of militancy and resistance in a way that enables them to harness their power and to make claims from the state on their own terms. Nevertheless, the anc councillor remains, and to date the residents of Thembelihle continue to struggle for their rights. It is, of course, evident (especially when one takes into account the electoral power of the anc and eff discussed in the previous chapter) that electoral politics do not go hand in glove with community politics and representation. Notably, the tcc, building on its history of placing socialist councillors in the local elections, made a strategic decision to support the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (srwp), which emerged on the back of the numsa moment, in the 2019 national elections. According to Reddy, “By matching the militancy and class independence of the social movement Left with structural and organizational might of the “official” Left, it seemed possible that a mass socialist movement could be rapidly brought into being.”56 But, the party arguably “floundered” and received about 25,000 votes nationally, or less than 10 per cent of the numsa membership (intended as the main vehicle of the party), failing to obtain one seat in parliament. The srwp could not, according to Reddy, “execute the transition from “protest to politics.’”57 While in Thembelihle’s ward, the anc’s voting patterns remained relatively the same as did the eff’s compared to the 2014 national elections, support for the srwp in Thembelihle appeared to have leading revolutionary activists in the tcc behind it, but it did not seem to be able to add the popular votes of those who were protesting, receiving only 1.2 per cent of the ward compared to the okm, which had received 6.3 per cent in the previous, 2016, local government elections. This suggests that despite the rebellions and victories in Thembelihle, in local level elections it remains relatively weak presently compared to earlier periods. Though the residents of Thembelihle have carefully navigated the shift from “protest to politics” arguably more successfully than any other informal settlement in the country, their actions of course cannot be isolated from the broader weaknesses of the left on a national and even international scale.

scales of participation: from imminent to immanent development There is now a vast quantity of literature that critiques the initial heroic claims of participation’s role in the transformation of politics and society. They point to the false hopes and illusions that scholars and activists place in its mainstream versions. Indeed, this literature has been geared towards

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6.1 tcc activists sit under a tree. tcc members sit under a tree at a breakaway session for the United Front, an initiative which flows out of South Africa’s “numsa moment.” While the main thrust of militant demonstrations in Thembelihle tend to draw the support of residents around local concerns, many activists have joined broader movements in their quest to bring together communities, workplaces, and students across South Africa in one common struggle against capitalism.

counteracting a romanticized approach by exposing the ways in which participation, regardless of the intentions, may simply serve to reinforce power relations and existing models of authority.58 Scholars then offered a more nuanced approach which investigates the potential, under particular circumstances, for participation to lead to transformative results for the dispossessed.59 More recently, Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemmas of the New Public Participation took a similar view, as the title suggests, that participation must be considered in its broader structural and political context.60 This literature was important because it did not seek to eliminate the contentious theory and practice altogether but sought also to explore the conditions under which it might lead to positive results or transformative possibilities. As much as radical activists within the tcc engage in a much broader set of working-class politics, doing everything they can to support grass-

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roots struggles elsewhere, this case study has suggested that the mobilization of hundreds and occasionally thousands of activists who regularly engage in contentious politics do not aim to do this. Hickey and Mohan’s book entitled Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation, provides a theoretical point of departure from which the people of Thembelihle and other dispossessed people can potentially emerge from the trap of mainstream processes of participatory development and governance. Hickey and Mohan insert Freirean thinking into contemporary debates around participation in development. Advancing beyond the ultimately negative portrayal of participation which suggests that the grassroots are manipulated by power and political processes, they draw from empirical and theoretically informed arguments from around the world in order to suggest the ways in which participatory approaches to development might lead to transformation. Following Freire, they contend that “understanding the ways in which participation relates to existing power structures and political systems, provides the basis for moving towards a more transformative approach to development; one which is rooted in the exercise of a broadly defined citizenship.”61 Relating participation to “power structures and political systems” and understanding participation as “the exercise of a broadly defined citizenship” were arguably the critical aspects of Freire’s approach. Hickey and Mohan delineate the specific components that they argue underpin previous successes in achieving transformative outcomes through participatory approaches to development. Critically, they argue that for participation to realize its potential of contributing to transformative outcomes for marginalized groups of people, it should meet three objectives. First, participation should engage with development as a historical process of social change, or what they call immanent development. Immanent development is the underlying framework of development; today it can be called neoliberalism as a form of capitalism. Neoliberalism undermines the ability of the marginalized to determine their own destinies and restricts people’s ability to bring about structural changes in power relations that would challenge the status quo.62 Within this framework, voice in Thembelihle and elsewhere is not only evaluated in its local context but also in terms of the extent to which is challenges the broader processes of development. Imminent development is defined as the implementation of specific interventions (projects) constrained within an underlying process or framework. Engaging with imminent development alone means the marginalized can only bargain with power holders for slightly higher wages and, perhaps, obtain

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more locally appropriate resources (“aid”) within the neoliberal framework. In other words, it means that there is no challenge to the structural relations of power that bind people into a state of poverty in the first place. While imminent development has been seen as important to theorists and practitioners who seek to make development more relevant in directly affecting the success of specific interventions, its focus has tended to obscure broader relations of power by focusing on the methodological approaches which place the role of the planner at the centre of the development intervention. Hickey and Mohan argue that: To privilege the practices of imminent development risks a further type of “irrelevance” by distracting from an engagement with the underlying forces of socio-economic and political change that shape people’s livelihoods. The related assertion that development can be wilfully “managed” through “the right mixture” of institutional responses has further “depoliticized” the practice of development in poor countries (Ferguson 1994), rendering it a technocratic process to be administered and planned for by agents of development rather than negotiated with and contested by its subjects.63 The objective posited by Hickey and Mohan is that participation must be pursued as part of a wider radical political project, which is intended to enable people to engage and organize against underlying processes of development, rather than work within their institutional confines. This type of project is based on an effort to transform the policy process and development discourse itself. It does so by placing inclusion of all and social justice at the centre of the approach. Responding to the central critique against the dominant practices of participation in development, Hickey and Mohan argue that participation should be part of “a project that seeks directly to challenge existing power relations rather than simply work around them for more technically efficient service delivery.”64 Applying the third objective, the radical political project that seeks to engage with underlying processes of social change, must also aim specifically to secure citizenship rights and participation for marginal or dispossessed groups. In this sense, citizenship is not something that is bestowed by the state onto people but is rather something that is actively contested and defined by marginal or dispossessed groups and individuals. Indeed, if participation is to engage with immanent development, citizenship must be about increasing the ability of the poor to claim their rights on

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their own terms. Citizenship is therefore practiced rather than given. By embarking on a radical political project to assist dispossessed people to dismantle the current system of development, participation may hold the possibility of responding to the critiques raised against it. While mainstream or World Bank spatial practices are a form of “governmentality” which “work to constitute a particular kind of measurable citizen who can be rendered amenable to intervention,”65 radical arenas aim to expand what is possible even if that means undermining existing structures of society. They may challenge, in the Foucauldian sense, the “boundaries of action” and the “conduct of conduct.”66 There is a remarkable difference between the rules, values, and norms of the People’s Parliament as a discursive arena and that of the tcc. These community leaders are socialist “mediators” in the Freirean sense, who activate ordinary residents and create a situation in which these two groups are contested in and of themselves while also engaging in a process of shaping and reshape each other.

scaling up utopias in the age of covid-19: power within movement Overall, the literature is heavily biased towards institutionalized or “invited” arenas of participation that have been constructed by states or development agencies. The nature and conceptualization of non-institutional, “invented” arenas or social movements has been given far less attention – let alone the interface between the two, which tends to be depicted in binaries. Social movements’ non-institutional or autonomous spaces, which themselves embody participatory approaches to governance, have rarely been the locus of research. Peering through the lens of radical democracy as it unfolds amongst the dispossessed in the Global South turns on its head the conventional critique of participation as a managerial technology for maintaining the status quo. On the one hand, a paradigm shift in how scholars, policy makers, and activists understand popular participation and local democracy is necessary in order to comprehend the meaning of the People’s Parliament since it is not filtered by those in management or authority positions nor do liberal ideologies set its terms of reference. But this book has also demonstrated that the People’s Parliament is driven fundamentally by local demands. Indeed, Della Porta and Rucht have pointed out that, in the study of social movements, power is “mainly conceptualized as being in the hands of the institutions that movements challenge as counter-powers (or challengers or counter-

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hegemonic actors).”67 Referring to Tarrow’s Power in Movement,68 they suggest the extant literature “does not refer to aspects of power within social movements.”69 The internal dynamics, the daily lived experiences of activists and their own decision-making processes at various levels – that is the “unspectacular life of social movements” – must be unpacked in order to understand the potential for these forms of participatory or “meeting democracy” to lead to transformative outcomes.70 The paradox of participation highlights, among other things, that we need to differentiate between “injustices of global capitalism” and the “social agents who could transform it.”71 If Freedom is an Endless Meeting,72 as Francesca Polleta’s book on the civil rights movement sought to demonstrate, so too is the quest for the attainment of an anti-capitalist future. And, as the leading activists in the tcc have learned, so is the struggle even to upgrade their own settlement. Empowered participatory governance (epg) is a “a theory of transformation” that also involves “a theory of conscious agency and strategy,” one which tends to be bound within a neoliberal ideological framework. As the case of okm has suggested however epg can be reclaimed, that is grounded as an alternative to capitalism. It is necessary therefore to explicate even the most remote of these forms.73 There is a need to “scale up utopias.”74 While the vast majority may seek incorporation into the system, others aim to leverage these reforms as a means by which to build socialist consciousness amongst the dispossessed. “The struggle for reforms is its means,” according to Luxenburg. “The social revolution, its aim.”75 It should also not go unnoticed that the People’s Parliament, the legitimate voice of the community, effectively reshaped rules, values, and norms that were once top-down and prescribed in policy. The indigenous people of Thembelihle are no longer “illegal.” They do not wait or choose from the limited framework initiated by the state and corporate institutions but instead locate their participation in their own experiences of exclusion. Moreover, they transformed exclusion to inclusion. To put it in another way, “citizenship is not being requested from a proscribed menu of rights and obligations, but actively defined and claimed on the basis of political capabilities.”76 The present period of sustained struggle over basic services in the face of the government’s broken promises in Thembelihle must be seen in light of this. covid-19, the pandemic that continues to shape all our lives, may also be used as a vantage point from which to explore the possibilities and limits of participatory governance. The crisis in India, and now in South Africa, indicates that big pharma is unwilling to grant the rights to its vac-

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cine even if millions literally die as a result. While the pandemic first attacked the advanced or industrialized countries in the Global North, it would soon devastate those living in the Global South where medicine, as imperialist vaccines would have it, is the last to reach. The anc government, consistent with a top-down approach, responded decisively to lock down the country in March 2020. According to Ngwane, writing on the effects of this on those living in informal settlements, these were “draconian steps that were harsh on the working class and poor.”77 Social distancing was often not possible in informal settlements, which are often overcrowded and lack adequate access to water for sanitation. “The shack dwellers,” Ngwane observed, “were cordoned off and their movements monitored by the police and army with apartheid-style bullying.”78 One activist in Thembelihle pointed to what appears to be a trend globally: “covid-19 has played a huge distraction in our lives, in our progress as an organisation, community and as human beings also. It has opened a space for politicians to manoeuvre and do what they want to do to the poor people on the ground.”79 The political and economic crisis associated with covid-19 has deepened austerity in South Africa and elsewhere and therefore the prospects for state delivery have weakened. This means that popular participation to advance the interests of the working class is arguably more crucial than in earlier periods. According to Wendy Brown’s Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, this degrading system is not only responsible for “saturating the meaning or content of democracy with market values” but it also “assaults the principles, practices, cultures, and institutions of democracy understood as rule by the people.”80 Radical ideals and alternatives such as putting people and the environment before profit become seemingly impossible within this framework while at the same time, with the onslaught of covid-19, access to national insurance schemes regardless of income and public health care has an increasingly significant bearing on all of us. But crises do not reach each of us the same way: the Black women of Thembelihle and elsewhere continue to bear the brunt of patriarchal and racial capitalism especially in the context of the “second pandemic” of gender-based violence which is often neglected by public discourses that inform participatory governance. The virus, of course, brings home the fact that public health cannot and should not be disarticulated from the health and well-being of individuals. Participation is often portrayed as an antidote to the top-down elitist politics which dominate the Global South. It is tempting to create a stark binary between bottom-up radical democracy as enacted by the dispos-

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sessed and a top-down, neoliberal and repressive state. But this obscures the politics within movements, their forms of organization and therefore the potential and limits they have to provide an alternative to capitalism. In the face of increasing austerity by the state in the context of covid-19, and the growing gap between the rich and the poor, the very idea of scaling up utopias is, of course, necessary to maintain our hope in a better world. But the participation paradox also points to the need to examine the internal democratic forms of organization produced by movements themselves on multiple scales, without which the reproduction of poverty and inequality may be further concealed as we risk digging our hopes into a deeper hole out of which we may fail to emerge. As much as the emancipation of the oppressed depends on their own individual and collective agency, so too do the ideas of grassroots democracy and popular participation arguably remain as relevant as ever. As the tcc’s history teaches us, participation cannot be isolated from the political and ideological terrain. The rules, norms, and boundaries of decisionmaking processes must be continually reimagined and placed at the centre of discussions amongst those who seek to reclaim participation’s revolutionary potential.

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Ice/Water on the Move

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Notes

chapter one 1 Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian, and Arthur Naiman, The Common Good (Monroe, ma: Odonian Press, 1998), 43. 2 For a sharp and comprehensive account see Caroline W. Lee, Michael McQuarrie, and Edward T. Walker, eds, Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemmas of the New Public Participation (New York and London: New York University Press, 2015). 3 Ibid. 4 Frances Cleaver, “Paradoxes of Participation: Questioning Participatory Approaches to Development,” Journal of International Development 11 (1999): 599. 5 Pablo A. Leal, “Participation: The Ascendancy of a Buzzword in a Neoliberal Era,” Development in Practice 17, nos 4–5 (August 2007): 541. 6 Ibid. For arguably the most influential scholarship to put forth a post-development critique, see also James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development” Depoliticization, And Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1994) and Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 7 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 1970). 8 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001), np. 9 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 10 Ibid., 44. 11 Denis Goulet, “Introduction,” in Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness (New York: Continuum, 1974), xi.

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Notes to pages 8–13

12 Budd L. Hall, “In From the cold? Reflections on Participatory Research 1970–2005,” Convergence 38, no. 1 (2005): 9. 13 Orlando Fals Borda, Knowledge and People’s Power: Lessons with Peasants in Nicaragua, Mexico and Columbia (New Delhi: Indian Social Institute, 1988), 10. 14 bell hooks, “bell hooks Speaking about Paulo Freire – The Man, His Work,” in Paulo Freire: A Critical Encounter, ed. Peter McLaren and Peter Leonard (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 147. 15 Gustavo Eteva, Madhu S. Prakash, and Dana L. Stuchul, “From Pedagogy for Liberation to Liberation from Pedagogy,” unpublished document (n/d), 4. http://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/330T/350kPEEEstevaVsFreiretable.pdf. 16 Majid Rahnema, “Participation,” in The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, ed. Wolfgang Sachs (London: Zed Books, 1992), 123. 17 Derek Rasmussen, “Cease to do Evil, Then Learn to do Good,” in Rethinking Freire: Globalization and the Environmental Crisis, ed. C.A. Bowers and Frederique Apffel-Marglin (London: Mahwah and Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2008), 113–30. 18 James Blackburn, “Understanding Paulo Freire: Reflections on the Origins, Concepts, and Possible Pitfalls of His Educational Approach,” Community Development Journal 35, no. 1 (2000): 12. 19 Ibid., 3. 20 Ross Kidd and Martin Byram, “Demystifying Pseudo-Freirean Development: the Case of Laedza Batanani,” Community Development Journal 17, no. 2 (1982): 91–105. 21 Ibid., 94. 22 Ibid., 95. 23 Ibid. 24 Cleaver, “Paradoxes of Participation,” 597–612. 25 Hall, “In from the Cold?” 8. 26 Leal, “Participation: The Ascendancy,” 541. 27 Ibid, 542. 28 Ibid. 29 Leal, “Participation: The Ascendancy.” 30 John Harriss, “Great Promise, Hubris and Recovery: A Participant’s History of Development Studies,” in A Radical History of Development Studies: Individuals, Institutions and Ideologies, ed. Uma Kothari (London and New York: Zed Books, 2005), 19. 31 Gustavo Esteva, “Development,” in The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, ed. Wolfgang Sachs (London: Zed Books, 1992), 12. 32 Quoted in Esteva, “Development,” 13.

Notes to pages 13–17

33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

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Esteva, “Development,” 13. Harriss, “Great Promise,” 19. Esteva, “Development,” 13. For perhaps the most groundbreaking dependency theorist of the time, see Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington: Howard University Press, 1972). Esteva, “Development,” 11. Cleaver, “Paradoxes of Participation,” 599. Sam Hickey and Giles Mohan, “Relocating Participation within a Radical Politics of Development,” Development and Change 36, no. 2 (2005): 239. Andrea Cornwall, “Beneficiary, Consumer, Citizen: Perspectives on Participation for Poverty Reduction” (Gothenburg: Sida Studies), report no. 2, 17. Cornwall, “Beneficiary, Consumer, Citizen,” 17. John M. Cohen and Norman T. Uphoff, “Participation’s Place in Rural Development: Seeking Clarity Through Specificity,” World Development 8, no. 3 (1980): 213. Ibid. Rahnema, “Participation,” 117. Leal, “Participation: The Ascendancy,” 540. Ibid, 540. Cornwall, “Beneficiary, Consumer, Citizen,” 26. David Moore, “Development Discourse as Hegemony: Towards an Ideological History: 1945–1995,” in Debating Development Discourse: Institutional and Popular Perspectives, ed. David Moore and Gerald Schmitz (London: Macmillan, 1995), 17. Cited in Moore, “Development Discourse,” 32. Ibid, 33. Majid Rahnema, “Participatory Action Research: The ‘Last Temptation of Saint’ Development,” Alternatives XV (1990): 199–226. Ibid., 200. Ibid. Rahnema, “Participation,” 117. Robert Chambers, Rural Development: Putting the Last First (Harlow: Prentice Hall, 1983). Peter Oakley, Projects with People: The Practice of Participation in Rural Development (London: International Labour Office, 1991), 4. Chambers, Rural Development, no page number (preface). Ibid., 190. Robert Chambers, Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First Last (London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 1997).

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60 61 62 63

64 65 66

67 68 69 70

71 72 73 74 75 76 77

78 79

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Notes to pages 17–21

Ibid., 2. Ibid., 91. Ibid., 162. Paul Francis, “Participatory Development at the World Bank: The Primacy of Process,” in Participation: The New Tyranny, ed. Bill Cooke and Uma Kothari (London: Zed Books, 2001), 78. World Bank, The World Bank Participation Sourcebook (Washington: Environmentally Sustainable Development, 1996), 8. Ibid., 8. Glyn Williams, “Towards a Repoliticization of Participatory Development: Political Capabilities and Spaces of Empowerment,” in Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development, ed. Samuel Hickey and Giles Mohan (London: Zed Books, 2004), 92. Ibid. Ibid. Cornwall, “Beneficiary, Consumer, Citizen,” 45. Giles Mohan and Kristian Stokke, “Participatory Development and Empowerment: The Dangers of Localism,” Third World Quarterly 21, no. 2 (2000): 247–68. Williams, “Towards a Repoliticization,” 93. Rahnema, “Participation,” 123–4. Deepa Narayan, Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Leal, “Participation: The Ascendancy,” 542–3. Cornwall, “Beneficiary, Consumer, Citizen,” 1. Emma Crewe and Elizabeth Harrison, Whose Development? An Ethnography of Aid (London: Zed Books, 1998), 73. Bill Cooke, “Rules of Thumb for Participatory Change Agents,” in Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development, ed. Samuel Hickey and Giles Mohan (London: Zed Books, 2004), 43–4. Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Ernesto Ganuza, Popular Democracy: The Paradox of Participation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017). Francesca Polletta, “Is Participation Without Power Good Enough?” Introduction to “Democracy Now: Ethnographies of Contemporary Participation,” The Sociological Quarterly 55 (2014): 457 (my emphasis). Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics and the Attack on Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003).

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chapter two 1 Erik Olin Wright, “Preface: The Real Utopias Project,” in Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance, ed. Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright (London and New York: Verso, 2003), vii–viii. 2 Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright, “Thinking about Empowered Participatory Governance,” in Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance, eds. Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright (London and New York: Verso, 2003), 5. 3 Ibid., 4. 4 Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias (London and New York: Verso, 2010), 121. 5 Ibid., 158. 6 Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Ernesto Ganuza, “Becoming a Best Practice: Neoliberalism and the Curious Case of Participatory Budgeting,” in Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemmas of the New Public Participation, eds. Caroline Lee, Michael McQuarrie, and Edward Walker (New York and London: New York University Press, 2015), 193. 7 Ibid., 193. 8 Ibid., 188. 9 Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Militants and Citizens: The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), back cover. 10 Sergio Baierle, “The Porto Alegre Thermidor: Brazils “Participatory Budget” at the Crossroads,” Socialist Register 39 (2003): 305–28. 11 Ibid., 305. 12 Ibid., 324. 13 Ibid., 309. 14 Ibid., 312. 15 Ibid., 311. 16 Ibid., 312. 17 Ibid. 18 James Holston, Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). 19 Patrick Heller, “Divergent Trajectories of Democratic Deepening: Comparing Brazil, India and South Africa,” Theory and Society 48 (2019): 366. 20 Majid Rahnema, “Participatory Action Research: The “Last Temptation of Saint” Development,” Alternatives 15 (1990): 199–226. 21 Luke Sinwell, “The Alexandra Development Forum (adf): The Tyranny of Invited Participatory Spaces?,” Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa 74 (2010): 23.

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Notes to pages 28–32

22 Patrick Heller and Libhongo Ntlokonkulu, “A Civic Movement or a Movement of Civics?: The South African National Civic Organisation in the Postapartheid Period” (Johannesburg: Centre for Policy Studies, 2001), 13. 23 Mzwanele Mayekiso, “Working Class Civil Society: Why We Need It, and How We Get It,” African Communist, 2nd Quarter (1992): 33–40. 24 Ibid., 38. 25 Ibid., 40. 26 African National Congress, “Reconstruction and Development Programme” (Johannesburg: Umanyano Publications, 1994), 131. 27 Ibid., 7. 28 Ibid., 15. 29 Ibid. 30 Heller and Ntlokonkulu, “A Civic Movement,” 14. 31 William Gumede, Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the anc (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2005), 284. 32 Ran Greenstein, “State, Civil Society and the Reconfiguration of Power in Post-apartheid South Africa,” Paper Presented to wiser seminar, Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University (August 2003). 33 Hilary Wainwright, Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy (London and New York: Verso, 2003), 197. 34 Heidi Brooks, Carin Runciman, and Trevor Ngwane, “Decolonising and Retheorising the Meaning of Democracy: A South African Perspective,” The Sociological Review 68, no. 1 (2019): 19. 35 Ibid. See also Patrick Heller, “Moving the State: The Politics of Democratic Decentralization in Kerala, South Africa, and Porto Alegre,” Politics and Society 29, no. 1 (2003): 131–63. For the most important and updated view of the anc’s discourse and practice of democracy see Heidi Brooks, The African National Congress and Participatory Democracy: From People’s Power to Public Policy (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). 36 Rahnema, “Participatory Action Research.” 37 Trevor Ngwane, “‘Insurgent Democracy’: Post-apartheid South Africa’s Freedom Fighters,” Journal of Southern African Studies 45, no. 1 (2019): 232. 38 John Saul and Patrick Bond, South Africa – The Present as History: From Mrs. Ples to Mandela and Marikana (Woodbridge: James Currey, 2016). 39 Statistics South Africa, “General Household Survey 2014” (Pretoria: Statistics South Africa, 2015). 40 Statistics South Africa, “Community Survey 2016” (Pretoria: Statistics South Africa, 2016), 65 41 Ibid., 60. 42 Trevor Ngwane, Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements (London: Pluto Press, 2021), back cover.

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43 Oxfam South Africa, Reclaiming Power: Womxn’s Work and Income Inequality in South Africa (Johannesburg: oza, November 2020), 12. 44 Ibid. 45 Patrick Bond, Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa (London: Pluto Press, 2001). 46 Dale McKinley, South Africa’s Corporatised Liberation: A Critical Analysis of the anc in Power (Auckland Park: Jacana Media, 2017). 47 Patrick Bond and Christopher Malikane, “Inequality Caused by Macro-Economic Policies During an Era of Durable Overaccummulation Crisis,” University of Witwatersrand School of Governance and School of Economics, Conference Paper (2019), 1. 48 Marianne Merten, “State Capture Wipes Out Third of sa’s r4.9 Trillion gdp – never mind lost trust, confidence, opportunity,” Daily Maverick (1 March 2019). https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-03-01-state-capturewipes-out-third-of-sas-r4-9-trillion-gdp-never-mind-lost-trust-confidenceopportunity/. 49 Laurence Bherer, Pascale Dufour, and Francoise Montambeault, “The Participatory Democracy Turn: An Introduction,” Journal of Civil Society 12, no. 3 (2016): 225–30. 50 Claire Benit-Gbaffou, ed., Popular Politics in South African Cities: Unpacking Community Participation (Cape Town: hsrc Press, 2015). 51 Sophie Oldfield and Saskia Greyling, “Waiting for the State: A Politics of Housing in South Africa”, Environment and Planning A 47 (2015): 1100-12. 52 Laurence Piper and Bettina von Lieres, “The Limits of Participatory Democracy and the Rise of the Informal Politics of Mediated Representation in South Africa,” Journal of Civil Society 12, no. 3 (2015): 315. 53 Claire Benit-Gbaffou, “Are Practices of Local Participation Sidelining the Institutional Participatory Channels?: Reflections from Johannesburg,” Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa 66, no. 1 (2008): 1–33. 54 Bherer et al., “The Participatory Democracy Turn,” 225. 55 Faranak Miraftab and Shana Wills, “Insurgency and Spaces of Active Citizenship: The Story of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign in South Africa,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 23 (2006): 200–17. 56 Steven Friedman, Power in Action: Democracy, Citizenship and Social Justice (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2018). 57 Julie Reid and Dale McKinley, Tell Our Story: Multiplying Voices in the News Media (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2020). 58 Jane Duncan, Protest Nation: The Right to Protest in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg: ukzn Press, 2016). 59 Julian Brown, South Africa’s Insurgent Citizens: On Dissent and the Possibility of Politics (London: Zed Books, 2015).

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Notes to pages 35–9

60 Faranak Miraftab, “Feminist Praxis: Citizenship and Informal Politics,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 8, no. 2 (2006): 211. 61 Miraftab and Wills, “Insurgency and Spaces of Active Citizenship,” 212. 62 Reid and McKinley, Tell Our Story, 5. 63 Friedman, Power in Action. 64 Ibid., 196. 65 Peter Alexander, Carin Runciman, Trevor Ngwane, Boikanyo Moloto, Kgothatso Mokgele, and Nicole van Staden, “Frequency and Turmoil: South Africa’s Community Protests 2005–2017,” South African Crime Quarterly 63 (March 2018): 31. 66 Brown, South Africa’s Insurgent Citizens, 25. 67 Duncan, Protest Nation, back cover. 68 Ibid., 3. 69 Trevor Ngwane, Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements (London: Pluto Press, 2021), 150. 70 Ibid. 71 Rahnema, “Participatory Action Research,” 201. 72 Ibid. 73 Malcolm X, “Quotes,” Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/930132a-man-who-stands-for-nothing-will-fall-for-anything. 74 Indian is the apartheid classification, not a township of citizens of India. Apartheid was a white supremist system of oppression which was centred on classifying people into racial categories. Indian was a socially engineered category for that group of South Africans who literally descended from people from India and were not absorbed into the group classified Coloured. It also included people with different ancestry who had been integrated into that community and appeared “Indian” to the apartheid classifiers. “Coloured” is a person deemed to be of mixed race by Apartheid classifiers (in practice, including people descended from enslaved Malaysians, Khoi Khoi, San, some descendants of Chinese labourers, and basically anyone who didn’t fit one of the other three categories: that is, Black, white, and Indian). Because Blacks were the most oppressed under apartheid, and Indians relatively less so since they were offered certain privileges under white supremacist rule, the racism in Lenasia (with Indians often in houses in the area and Blacks often occupying shacks) plays out in extreme ways with those living in informal settlements including Thembelihleans (almost all Black) bearing the brunt. 75 Resident of Thembelihle, paraphrased in Anneke Le Roux, “Contesting

Notes to pages 39–45

76 77 78 79 80 81

82

83 84 85 86

87 88 89 90 91

92 93 94 95 96 97

98

195

Space: A Ward Committee and a Social Movement Organisation in Thembelihle, Johannesburg” (ma diss., University of Johannesburg, 2014). Li Pernegger, The Agonistic City: State-Society Strife in Johannesburg (London: Zed Books, 2020), 3. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 46. Ibid., 50–1. Ibid., 55. City of Johannesburg, “About Region G,” Joburg, no date, https://www.joburg .org.za/about_/regions/Pages/Region%20G%20-%20Ennerdale,%20Orange %20Farm/about-us.aspx. Marisa Lourenco, “Participation and the Politics of Mediation: The Case of the Thembelihle Crisis Committee” (ma diss., University of Witwatersrand, 2018), 36. Stats sa, “Census 2011,” Statistics South Africa, www.statssa.gov.za. City of Johannesburg, in Le Roux, “Contesting Space,” 164. Stats sa, “Census 2011.” Thapelo Tselapedi and Jackie Dugard, “Reclaiming Power: A Case Study of the Thembelihle Crisis Committee” (Johannesburg: Socio-Economic Rights Institute, 2013), 63. Ibid., 62. Le Roux, “Contesting Space,” 164. Ibid., 108. Lourenco, “Participation and the Politics of Mediation,” 54. Madumetja Ledwaba, “Violence as Communication? Youth Protest in Thembelihle Informal Settlement” (ma diss., University of Johannesburg, 2019), 58. Ibid., 146. Ibid., 144. Pablo A. Leal, “Participation: The Ascendancy of a Buzzword in a Neoliberal Era,” Development in Practice 17, nos 4–5 (August 2007): 542. Deepa Narayan, Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Reid and McKinley, Tell Our Story, 100 (my emphasis). Nicolette Pingo, “Institutionalisation of a Social Movement: The Case of Thembelihle, the Thembelihle Crisis Committee and the Operation Khanyisa Movement and the use of the Brick, the Ballot and the Voice” (ma diss., University of Witwatersrand, 2013), 119. Ibid., 62.

196

Notes to pages 45–50

99 Ibid., 11 (my emphasis). 100 Trevor Ngwane, “‘Amakomoti’ as ‘Democracy on the Margins’: Popular Committees in South Africa’s Informal Settlements” (PhD diss., University of Johannesburg, 2016). 101 Ibid., 287. 102 Robert Chambers, Rural Development: Putting the Last First (Harlow: Prentice Hall, 1983). 103 Leal, “Participation: The Ascendancy of a Buzzword.” 104 Bandile Mdlalose, “The Rise and Fall of Abahlali baseMjondolo, a South African Social Movement,” Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 41, no. 3 (2014): 345–53. See also Prishani Naidoo, “Subaltern Sexiness: From a Politics of Representation to a Politics of Difference,” African Studies 69, no. 3 (2010): 439–56 and Shannon Walsh, “‘Uncomfortable Collaborations’: Contesting Constructions of the ‘Poor’ in South Africa,” Review of African Political Economy 35, no. 116 (2008): 255–79. 105 Ashwin Desai, “Vans, Autos, Kombis and the Drivers of Social Movements,” Centre for Civil Society, ukzn paper presented at the Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture Series (28 July 2006), 5. 106 Rahnema, “Participatory Action Research.” 107 Ashwin Desai, “Legalism, Pragmatism and Community Revoltism,” unpublished paper (Centre for Sociological Research, University of Johannesburg, 2010), 9. 108 Ibid., 10. 109 Ibid., 12. 110 Walsh, “Uncomfortable Collaborations,” 256 111 Aziz Choudry and Salim Vally, “History’s Schools: Past Struggles and Present Realities,” in History’s Schools: Past Struggles and Present Realities, ed. Aziz Choudry and Salim Vally (Pietermaritzburg: ukzn Press, 2018), 3. 112 Ibid. 113 Luke Sinwell and Siphiwe Mbatha, The Spirit of Marikana: The Rise of Insurgent Trade Unionism in South Africa (London: Pluto Press, 2016). 114 See: Koni Benson, Crossroads: I Live Where I Like (Oakland: pm Press, 2021). Mabona Machaba, “Towards Understanding Land Rights in Marikana Informal Settlement in Kwa-Thema, Ekurhuleni” (ma diss., University of Johannesburg, 2019); Thembelihle Maseko, “Intersections: A Study of the Private Lives and Public Lives of Selected Women from the Social Movement Organisation, Abahlali baseFreedom Park” (ma diss., University of Johannesburg, 2017). 115 Asanda Benya, “The Invisible Hands: Women in Marikana,” Review of African Political Economy 42, no. 146 (2016): 545–60.

Notes to pages 53–64

197

chapter three 1 Andrea Cornwall, “Spaces for Transformation? Reflections on Issues of Power and Difference in Participation in Development,” in Participation from Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development, ed. Samuel Hickey and Giles Mohan (London And New York: Zed Books, 2004), 75–91. 2 Ibid. 3 Henry Lefebvre, The Production of Space (London: Verso, 1974). 4 Cornwall, “Spaces for Transformation?,” 75. 5 Ibid., 76. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 78. 8 Samuel Hickey and Giles Mohan, “Towards Participation as Transformation: Critical Themes and Challenges,” in Participation from Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development, ed. Samuel Hickey and Giles Mohan (London And New York: Zed Books, 2004), 20. 9 Siphiwe Segodi, interview undertaken by Luke Sinwell, 18 February 2019. 10 Red Ants, “Security,” Red Ant Security Relocation and Eviction Services, https://red-ants.co.za/security-armed-reaction/. 11 Ibid. 12 The visit by Mandela is remembered by many residents as a key turning point in thinking about the potential for future development in Thembelihle. At least four of the key respondents that Trevor Ngwane interviewed for his PhD referred to this visit. See Trevor Ngwane, “‘Amakomoti’ as ‘Democracy on the Margins’: Popular Committees in South Africa’s Informal Settlements” (PhD diss., University of Johannesburg, 2016), 275. This impressive dissertation includes a strong political and historical chapter dedicated to Thembelihle itself. 13 Segodi, interview. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 This quotation and observations are drawn from an interview with an elder in Thembelihle, undertaken by Trevor Ngwane for his PhD thesis. The quote appears in Ngwane, “‘Amakomoti’ as ‘Democracy on the Margins,’” 277. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Segodi, interview. 21 Ngwane, “‘Amakomoti’ as ‘Democracy on the Margins,’” 282.

198

Notes to pages 65–73

22 Ibid., 274. 23 Ibid., 287. 24 Jane (a pseudonym), interview undertaken by Siphiwe Mbatha, 6 March 2019. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ngwane, “‘Amakomoti’ as ‘Democracy on the Margins,’” 277. 28 Sibusiso Trevor Nhlatseng, interview undertaken by Siphiwe Mbatha, 22 February 2019. 29 Ibid. 30 Segodi, interview. 31 Quoted in Buhle Khumalo, “Cops Open Fire on Protestors in Lenasia,” iol News (25 June 2002), https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/cops-open-fireon-protesters-in-lenasia-88633. 32 Ibid. 33 Stuart Wilson, Any Room for the Poor? Forced Evictions in Johannesburg, South Africa,” (Geneva: Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, 2005), https://docs.escrnet.org/usr_doc/COHRE_Johannesburg_FFM_high_res.pdf, 87. 34 Quoted in Liesl Venter, “We Won’t Be Moved,” The Citizen (26 June 2002). 35 Ibid. 36 Segodi, interview. 37 Ibid. 38 Ngwane, “‘Amakomoti’ as ‘Democracy on the Margins,’” 277. 39 Ibid. 40 Phetogo Simon Gopane (nicknamed Ghetto), interview undertaken by Siphiwe Mbatha, 20 February 2019. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 This quote is drawn from personal communication between Nicolette Pingo and Simphiwe Zwane’s mother, Margaret Zwane, on 16 June 2012. See Nicolette Pingo, “Institutionalisation of a Social Movement: The Case of Thembelihle, the Thembelihle Crisis Committee and the Operation Khanyisa Movement and the use of the Brick, the Ballot and the Voice” (MSc. diss., University of Witwatersrand, 2013), 119. 44 Simphiwe Zwane, interview undertaken by Siphiwe Mbatha, 13 April 2019. 45 Simphiwe Zwane, interview undertaken by Luke Sinwell, 24 August 2021. 46 Ibid. 47 Pingo, “Institutionalisation of a Social Movement,” 119. 48 Ibid., 119.

Notes to pages 74–87

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

199

Siphwe Mbatha, interview undertaken by Luke Sinwell, 12 July 2019. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Bhayiza Moses Miya, interview undertaken by Luke Sinwell, 13 July 2019. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Mbatha, interview. Bhayiza, interview. As paraphrased by Bhayiza, interview. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ngwane, “‘Amakomoti’ as ‘Democracy on the Margins,’” 277.

chapter four 1 William Gamson, The Strategy of Social Protest (Belmont: Wadsworth, 1990). 2 Jack A. Goldstone, “Introduction: Bridging Institutionalized and Noninstitutionalized Politics,” in States, Parties and Social Movements, ed. Jack A. Goldstone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 3. 3 John K. Glenn, “Parties out of Movements: Party Emergence in Postcommunist Eastern Europe,” in States, Parties and Social Movements, ed. Jack A. Goldstone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 147. 4 Carlos R. Notos, “‘Let the Citizens Fix This Mess!’Podemos’ Claim for Participatory Democracy in Spain,” Cogitatio 7, no. 2 (2019): 191. 5 Oscar Garcia Agustin and Marco Briziarelli, “Introduction: Wind of Change: Podemos, its Dreams and its Politics,” in Podemos and the New Political Cycle: Left-Wing Populism and Anti-Establishment Politics, ed. Oscar Garcia Agustin and Marco Briziarelli (Camden: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 4. 6 Ibid., 6.

200

Notes to pages 87–97

7 Cesar Rendueles and Jorge Sola, “The Rise of Podemos: Promises, Constraints and Dillemas,” in Podemos and the New Political Cycle: Left-Wing Populism and Anti-Establishment Politics, ed. Oscar Garcia Agustin and Marco Briziarelli (Camden: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 26. 8 Alexandros Kioupkiolis and Giorgos Katsambekis, “Radical Left Populism from the Margins to the Mainstream: A Comparison of Syriza and Podemos,” in Podemos and the New Political Cycle: Left-Wing Populism and AntiEstablishment Politics, ed. Oscar Garcia Agustin and Marco Briziarelli (Camden: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 218. 9 Trevor Ngwane, “Sparks in the Township,” New Left Review 22 (July/August 2003): 37–8. 10 Ibid., 38. 11 Ibid., 39. 12 Ibid., 40. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., 41. 17 Ibid., 43. 18 Ibid., 45. 19 Anthony Egan and Alex Wafer, The Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (Durban: Centre for Civil Society and School of Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2004). 20 apf, “About the Anti-Privatisation Forum,” Anti-Privatisation Forum (1 December 2001), apf.org.za/spip/php?article2. 21 Faranak Miraftab and Shana Wills, “Insurgency and Spaces of Active Citizenship: The Story of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign in South Africa,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 25 (2005): 210. 22 apf, “About the Anti-Privatisation Forum.” 23 Siphiwe Segodi, interview undertaken by Dale McKinley for the Anti-Privatisation Forum Project, 23 August 2010. 24 Ibid. 25 Thembelihle Crisis Committee, Constitution of the Thembelihle Crisis Committee, adopted in 2013. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Segodi, interview by Dale McKinley. 29 Ibid. 30 Egan and Wafer, “The Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee,” 10. 31 Sakhlela Buhlungu, “Upstarts or Bearers of Tradition? The Anti-Privatisation

Notes to pages 97–104

32 33

34

35 36 37

38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53

201

Forum of Gauteng,” in Voices of Protest: Social Movements in Post-apartheid South Africa, ed. Richard Ballard, Adam Habib, and Imraan Valodia (Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2006), 81. apf, “Arresting Democracy,” Anti-Privatisation Forum (4 June 2002), apf.org.za/htm/020604arresting.htm. Ngwane, “Township Sparks,” 47. Eskom, the main supplier of electricity in the country, is an invented name based on its previous acronyms (escom, with a C, in English and evkom in Afrikaans). I witnessed activists introducing themselves in this way on dozens of occasions at meetings of the Democratic Left Front (dlf) between 2011 and 2014. okm, “Platform of the Operation Khanyisa Movement” (2 September 2012). okm, “okm Pledge” signed by the Operation Khanyisa Movement candidates standing for election in the local government elections (18 May 2011). Bhayiza Miya, as paraphrased by Nicolette Pingo, “Institutionalisation of a Social Movement: The Case of Thembelihle, the Thembelihle Crisis Committee and the Operation Khanyisa Movement and the use of the Brick, the Ballot and the Voice” (MSc. diss., University of the Witwatersrand, 2013), 79. Pingo, “Institutionalisation of a Social Movement,” 79. Edwin Lefutswane (nicknamed “Sibi”), interview undertaken by Luke Sinwell, 29 September 2019. Centre for Applied Legal Studies, Access to Education for Learners in Thembelihle (Research Report) (Johannesburg: cals, University of Witwatersrand, 2006), 2. Sibi, interview. Ibid. Ibid. Bhayiza Miya, as paraphrased in Sibi’s interview. Sibi, interview. Ibid. Dan Bovu, paraphrased in Sibi’s interview. Sibi, interview. Bhayiza Miya, interview undertaken by Luke Sinwell, 13 July 2019. Sibi, interview. David Kimemia and Ashley Van Niekerk, “Why Unsafe Paraffin Stoves are Still Being Widely Used in South Africa,” The Conversation (9 August 2018), https://theconversation.com/why-unsafe-paraffin-stoves-are-still-being-widelyused-in-south-africa-100337. Ibid. Nathi (pseudonym), interview undertaken by Luke Sinwell, no date.

202

54 55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

Notes to pages 105–16

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Benjamin Kulube, quoted in Mbali Phala, “After Years of Protest, Thembelihle is Finally Getting Electricity,” The Daily Vox (30 June 2016), https://www.thedailyvox.co.za/years-protest-thembelihle-finally-getting-electricity/. Zodwa Sithole, quoted in Phala, “After Years of Protest.” Janice Ndarala, interview undertaken by Luke Sinwell, 26 July 2019. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Independent Electoral Commission. “Municipal Elections Results,” iec, https://www.elections.org.za/electionresults/Downloads/ME-Results. Bhayiza, interview by Luke Sinwell. Thembelihle Crisis Committee, “Memorandum of Grievances from the Community of Thembelihle” (17 February 2011). Ibid. Michael Clark, “An Anatomy of Dissent and Repression: The Criminal Justice System and the 2011 Thembelihle Protest” (Johannesburg: SocioEconomic Rights Institute, 2014), 4. Anonymous Resident, quoted in Mems Moosa, “Winter of Our Discontent: Hard(er) Times in Thembelihle,” Lenasia Sun (June 2011). Kay Makhubela, quoted in Moosa, “Winter of Our Discontent.” Janice, interview. Times Live, “Thembelihle Protest Turns Violent,” [Video] Times Live (5 September 2011), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0N9RrXduBg. Ibid. Ibid. Nathi, interview. Clark, “An Anatomy of Dissent,” 22. Siphiwe Mbatha, interview undertaken by Luke Sinwell on 12 July 2019. Ibid. Ibid. Nomvula Mokonyane, quoted in Clark, “An Anatomy of Dissent,” 22. Clark, “An Anatomy of Dissent,” 22.

Notes to pages 116–26

203

85 City Press, “Mayhem in Thembelihle” [Video], City Press (9 September 2011), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pBfgH9Kdos&ab_channel=CityPress. 86 sabc News, “Thembelihle 13 September 2011,” published 13 September 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cINot720cU. 87 Clark, “An Anatomy of Dissent,” 22. 88 Ibid, 25. 89 Ibid, 35. 90 Operation Khanyisa Movement, “Arrest of Thembelihle okm Councillor,” [Press Statement] (24 October 2011). 91 Ibid. 92 Simphiwe Zwane, interview by Luke Sinwell with Simphiwe Zwane and Siphiwe Mbatha, 7 August 2019. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 Siphiwe Mbatha, interview by Luke Sinwell with Simphiwe Zwane and Siphiwe Mbatha, 7 August 2019. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. 99 Interview, Zwane. 100 Sibusiso Trevor Nhlatseng, interview by Siphiwe Mbatha, 22 February 2019. 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid. 103 Marcel Paret, “Working-Class Fragmentation, Party Politics and the Complexities of Solidarity in South Africa’s United Front,” Sociological Review 65, no. 2 (2017): 28.

chapter five 1 Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books, 2015). 2 Wendy Brown, “We Are All Democrats Now,” in Democracy in What State?, ed. Giorgio Agamben (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 44–57. 3 Majid Rahnema, “Participatory Action Research: The ‘Last Temptation Saint’ Development,” Alternatives 15 (1990): 199–226. 4 Siphiwe Segodi, interview undertaken by Luke Sinwell, 15 June 2015. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid.

204

Notes to pages 126–38

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Ibid. Paraphrased by Segodi, ibid. As paraphrased by “Themba” (pseudonym), interview, no date. “Themba,” interview. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. ewn, “Lenasia Resident Arrested for Shooting at Protestors,” Eye Witness News (26 February 2015), https://ewn.co.za/2015/02/26/Lenasia-residentarrested-for-shooting-at-protesters. Busi Mtabane, “r2k Gauteng Statement on Situation in Thembelihle,” r2k (26 February 2015), http://www.r2k.org.za/2015/02/26/thembelihle/. “Themba,” interview. Ibid. United Front (Interim National Working Committee), “End the de facto State of Emergency in Thembelihle” [statement], (31 March 2015), https://www.numsa.org.za/article/end-the-de-facto-state-of-emergency-inthembelihle/. Siphiwe Segodi, “The Siege of Thembelihle,” Amandla Magazine 39 (June/July 2015): 12–13. Ibid. Mponyana Nhlatseng, interview undertaken by Siphiwe Mbatha, 16 April 2019. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Nhlakanipho Lukhele, interview undertaken by Siphiwe Mbatha, 22 April 2019. Shain Germaner, “Cops Move in to Stem Lenasia Mayhem,” iol News (27 February 2015), https://www.iol.co.za/news/cops-move-in-to-stem-lenasiamayhem-1824672. Lukhele, interview. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Nhlatseng, interview. Ibid. Ibid.

17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Notes to pages 138–51

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

65 66 67 68 69 70 71

205

Ibid. Jack (pseudonym), interview undertaken by Siphiwe Mbatha, 24 May 2018. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ghetto (nickname), interview undertaken by Siphiwe Mbatha, 20 February 2019. Ibid. Jack, interview. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid Ibid. Ibid. Mathata Ralekgokgo, interview undertaken by Siphiwe Mbatha, 10 July 2019. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Asana Ali, quoted in ewn, “Thembelihle Resident Shot During Protest Dies,” Eye Witness News (26 February), https://ewn.co.za/2015/02/27/Thembelihleresident-shot-during-protest-dies. Sello Lerotholi, interview undertaken by Siphiwe Mbatha, 2 March 2018. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Bontle (pseudonym), interview undertaken by Simphiwe Zwane, 17 July 2019. Ibid.

206

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

82 83 84 85

86 87

88 89

90

91 92 93

94

Notes to pages 152–8

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid As paraphrased by Bontle, interview. Bontle, interview. Ibid. United Front, “End the de facto.” City of Johannesburg, “City Gives Power to Residents of Informal Settlements,” Joburg (28 October 2015), https://www.joburg.org.za/media_/Newsroom/Pages/2016%20&%202015%2 0Articles/city-gives-power-to-residents-of-informal-settlements-ID10142.aspx. Sibusiso Trevor Nhlatseng, interview undertaken by Siphiwe Mbatha, 22 February 2019. Gauteng Provincial Government, “Government to Accelerate Provision of Services in Thembelihle” [media statement], (24 April 2015). Jacob Mamabolo, quoted in Gauteng Provincial Government, “Government to Accelerate.” Jacob Zuma, from “President Zuma Addressing Thembelihle Residents in Lenasia,” [Video], filmed by Neo Fiona Sikati (30 June 2016), https://youtu.be/Ol6AKRin7y4. Rahnema, “Participatory Action Research,” 201. Jabulane Khumalo, “Julius Malema Mobilises Thembelihle Residents,” Rising Sun Lenasia (28 October 2015), https://risingsunlenasia.co.za/20632/juliusmalema-mobilises-thembelihle-residents/. Siphiwe Mbatha, interview undertaken by Luke Sinwell, 1 May 2019. Election Results for Ward 8 (including Thembelihle), 2000–19. Sourced from Michael Braun’s personal research database collection, University of Toronto. Carin Runciman, “The ‘Ballot and the Brick’: Protest, Voting and Non-Voting in Post-apartheid South Africa,” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 34, no. 3 (2016): 431. Election Results, 2000–19. Rahnema, “Participatory Action Research,” 200. Marcel Paret, “The Politics of Local Resistance in Urban South Africa: Evidence from Three Informal Settlements,” International Sociology 33, no. 3 (2018): 347. Rahnema, “Participatory Action Research,” 223.

Notes to pages 158–61

207

95 Majid Rahnema, “Participation,” in The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, ed. Wolfgang Sachs (London: Zed Books), 128.

chapter six 1 Edward Walker, Michael McQuarrie, and Caroline Lee, “Rising Participation and Declining Democracy,” in Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemmas of the New Public Participation, ed. Caroline Lee, Michael McQuarrie, and Edward Walker (New York and London: New York University Press, 2015), 8. 2 Craig Calhoun, “Foreword,” in Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemmas of the New Public Participation, ed. Caroline Lee, Michael McQuarrie, and Edward Walker (New York and London: New York University Press, 2015), xii. 3 Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Ernesto Ganuza, “Becoming a Best Practice: Neoliberalism and the Curious Case of Participatory Budgeting,” in Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemmas of the New Public Participation, ed. Caroline Lee, Michael McQuarrie, and Edward Walker (New York and London: New York University Press, 2015), 188. 4 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (New York: International Publishers, 1983), 79. 5 Colin Barker, “Beyond the Waves: Marxism, Social Movements and Revolution,” Paper for Alternative Futures and Popular Protest (Manchester, 30 March to 1 April, 2015), n.p. 6 Trevor Ngwane, Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements (London: Pluto Press, 2021), 10. 7 Ibid., 11. 8 Andrea Cornwall, “Spaces for Transformation? Reflections on Issues of Power and Difference in Participation in Development,” in Participation from Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development, ed. Samuel Hickey and Giles Mohan (London and New York: Zed Books, 2004), 77. 9 Ibid., 80. 10 Alan Johnson, “Self-emancipation and Leadership: The Case of Martin Luther King,” Leadership and Social Movements, ed. Colin Barker, Alan Johnson, and Michael Lavalette (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press), 97 (his emphasis). 11 Ibid., 96 (his emphasis). 12 Simphiwe Zwane, quoted in Ilanit Chernick, “anc Accused of ‘Electrickery’ Ploy,” iol News (2016), https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/anc-accused-ofelectrickery-ploy-2051705.

208

Notes to pages 162–73

13 Nhlakanipho Lukhele, quoted in Ilanit Chernick, “anc Accused of ‘Electrickery’ Ploy,” iol News (2016), https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/anc-accusedof-electrickery-ploy-2051705. 14 Sibusiso Trevor Nhlatseng, interview undertaken by Siphiwe Mbatha, 22 February 2019. 15 Thembelihle Crisis Committee, “Memorandum of Grievances and Demands,” submitted to the Executive Mayor (30 October 2017). 16 City of Johannesburg (Office of the Speaker), “The Attention to Nhlekampho [sic] On Behalf of Thembelihle crisis Committee,” (Johannesburg: Office of the Speaker to Council, December 2017 or January 2018). 17 Siphiwe Mbatha, from notes taken by Luke Sinwell at the University of Johannesburg on 27 February 2018. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Anonymous resident, as quoted in an interview with Siphiwe Bembe, interview undertaken by Siphiwe Mbatha, 22 April 2018. 21 As paraphrased by “Themba,” (pseudonym), interview, no date. 22 Ibid. 23 “Lesley,” (pseudonym), interview, no date. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Siphiwe Bembe, interview undertaken by Siphiwe Mbatha, 22 April 2018. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Anonymous residents, as paraphrased by Siphiwe Bembe, interview. 34 Bembe, interview. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Anonymous residents, as paraphrased by Siphiwe Bembe, interview. 40 Bembe, interview. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Ngwane, “Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy,” 9. 44 Nombulelo Nyezi, interview undertaken by Siphiwe Mbatha, 25 May 2018.

Notes to pages 173–83

45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59

60

61

62

63 64 65 66 67

209

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Mbatha, notes taken by Luke Sinwell. Nyezi, interview. Ibid. Ibid. Mbatha, notes taken by Luke Sinwell. Ibid. Ibid. Thembelihle Crisis Committee, “Petition for the Removal of the coj Ward 8 Councillor,” (January 2019). Niall Reddy, “South Africa: A New Politics from the Left?” Elephant (2021) https://www.theelephant.info/features/2021/04/09/south-africa-a-new-politicsfrom-the-left/. Ibid. Bill Cooke and Uma Kothari, eds, Participation: The New Tyranny? (London: Zed Books, 2001). Samuel Hickey and Giles Mohan, eds, Participation from Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development (London and New York: Zed Books, 2004). Caroline Lee, Michael McQuarrie, and Edward Walker, eds, Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemmas of the New Public Participation (New York and London: New York University Press). Samuel Hickey and Giles Mohan, “Towards Participation as Transformation: Critical Themes and Challenges,” in Participation from Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development, ed. Samuel Hickey and Giles Mohan (London and New York: Zed Books, 2004), 5. Samuel Hickey and Giles Mohan, “Relocating Participation within a Radical Politics of Development: Insights from Political Action and Practice,” in Participation from Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development, ed. Samuel Hickey and Giles Mohan (London and New York: Zed Books, 2004), 159–74. Hickey and Mohan, “Towards Participation as Transformation,” 10. Hickey and Mohan, “Relocating Participation,” 168. Cornwall, “Spaces for Transformation?,” 83. Ibid., 80–1. Donatella Della Porta and Dieter Rucht, “Power and Democracy in Social Movements: An Introduction,” in Meeting Democracy: Power and Deliberation

210

68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

Notes to pages 183–4

in Global Justice Movements, ed. Donatella Della Porta and Dieter Rucht (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 2. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Della Porta and Rucht, “Power and Democracy in Social Movements,” 2. Ibid. Dylan Riley, “An Anti-Capitalism That Can Win,” Jacobin (7 January 2016), https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/olin-wright-real-utopias-socialismcapitalism-gramsci-lenin-luxemburg/. Francesca Polletta, Freedom is an Endless Meeting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). Eric Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias (London: Verso, 2010), 370. Craig Borowiak, “Scaling Up Utopias: E.O. Wright and the Search for Economic Alternatives,” New Political Science 34, no. 1 (2012): 360, 262. Rosa Luxemburg, The Essential Rosa Luxemburg: Reform or Revolution and The Mass Strike, ed. Helen Scott (Chicago: Haymarket Books), 41. Hickey and Mohan, “Relocating Participation,” 169. Ngwane, Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy, 158. Ibid., 159. Siphiwe Mbatha, in a lecture for Luke Sinwell’s Urban Sociology (Hons) module at the University of Johannesburg (13 August 2020). Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books), 9.

Index

211

Index

Abahlali baseMjondolo, 37; theorists of, 37 access to basic services, 35, 93, 104, 148 African Concerned Masses, 62–3 African National Congress (anc), 3–4, 26–7, 29–34, 39, 41, 55–7, 59, 61–3, 68–9, 74–6, 78–80, 82–3, 88–92, 97–9, 103, 105, 107, 109–14, 117, 121, 124, 132, 149–58, 160–2, 166, 177–8, 184; gear policy of, 27, 31, 39, 57, 92; neoliberal policies of, 39, 61, 84; and post-apartheid, 5, 22, 26; Youth League (ancyl), 69, 109, 112, 157 Alexandra Civic Organisation (aco, later sanco), 29. See also sanco anti-apartheid movement, resistance, and struggle, 28–31, 80, 131 anti-eviction campaign (aec), 57 Anti-Privatisation Forum (apf), 57, 93–8, 100, 118 apartheid, 26, 28–9, 31, 33; postapartheid, 4, 5, 22. See also postapartheid South Africa

#BlackLivesMatter, 118 Black Local Authorities (blas), 28 Bontle, 150–3 Bovu, Daniel, 56–7, 66, 68, 103, 109, 110, 155

Bembe, Siphiwe, 167–72 Black Economic Empowerment (bee), 33

Democratic Alliance, 139, 162 Democratic Left Front (dlf), 47–8, 118–19, 150, 154

capitalism, 4, 7, 13–14, 21, 24, 28, 31–2, 36–8, 43, 46–7, 52, 60, 79, 89, 159–60, 179–80, 183–5 Centre for Applied Legal Studies (cals), 100 Centre for Social Change, 36, 49 Chamber of Mines, 156 Chavez, Hugo (Venezuela), 87 collective action, 35, 94, 158 community-driven development, 44 community protest(s), 81 corporatized liberation, 33 counter-hegemonic, 52, 122; practice and theory, 35, 48 Counter-xenophobic mobilization, 172–6 covid-19, 41, 182–5

212

Index

democratization, 29 democratizing the tcc, 69–73 Department of Human Settlements (Gauteng), 155 development processes, top-down, 4 development saints, 16–27, 32–8, 46–52 Economic Freedom Fighters (eff), 58–9, 117, 154, 156–8, 178 electoral politics, 29, 84, 99, 101–2, 156, 176–8 electricity (supply and cut-offs), 4–5, 32–3, 36, 39, 47, 53, 55–6, 58–9, 61, 63, 72, 75, 83–4, 88–9, 93, 96–7, 103–10, 112–16, 122, 124, 136, 139–40, 148, 150–1, 153–6, 161, 168, 177 elite transition, 33 Emergency Medical Services (ems), 109 empowered participatory governance (epg), 23–4, 52, 84, 122, 183 engine of direct democracy, 113 ethnography, 5, 47, 161–5 evictions/forced evictions/removals, 5, 37, 39–40, 50, 55–7, 60–2, 64–8, 73, 79–80, 83, 93–4, 96–7, 103, 111, 139, 149, 154, 166, 177 FeesMustFall movement, 157 Freire/Freirean-Marxist, 32; participatory change agents, politics of, 6; participatory democracy, 5–8, 15; thinking/philosophy, 9–11, 14, 160, 180 frelimo (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique), 90 gender inequality, 71–2, 95 Gopane, Phetogo (“Ghetto”), 69–70, 142–3

grassroots democracy, 3, 38, 47, 52–5, 97, 185; arresting, 132–3; origins of, 56–61 gross domestic product (gdp), 34 Growth Employment and Redistribution (gear) policy, 27, 31, 39, 57, 92 Iglesias, Pablo (Spain), 87 illegal electricity connections, 56, 103–7 Imbawula, 108 Impimpi, 80 informal trading, 78 “Jack,” 138–46 January 2018 protest, 163–4, 174 Johannesburg Stock Exchange, 156 Keep Left/Socialism from Below, 47, 150 Latin American Pink Tide, 87 leadership, politics of, 47 Lefutswane, Edwin (“Sibi”), 100–3, 128 Lenasia, 39, 61, 78, 82, 102, 104, 127, 136, 141, 144, 148–9, 152, 156, 166 Lerotholi, Sello, 149–50 Lesley, 166–7 local government, negotiations with, 112 Local Government Transition Act, 28 Lukhele, Mponyana, 133–5, 137–8 Lukhele, Nhlakanipho, 49, 133–7, 161 Magebula, Vulindlela (Member of the Mayoral Committee – mmc), 125 Makama, Baba, 160 Malema, Julius, 114, 156–8 Mamabolo, Jacob, 125–6, 130, 136, 155

Index

Mandela, Nelson, 26, 30, 39, 57, 61, 69, 71, 76, 80, 90 Mandela, Winnie, 80, 90–1 Marikana, 50, 58, 89, 117–21, 132, 157, 171; Judicial Commission of Inquiry, 118 Marxist, 5, 7, 12–14, 23–4, 29, 32, 60, 84, 89, 91, 98, 122, 175 Mashaba, Herman, 162, 174 Masiwa, Bonginkosi, 48 Mayekiso, Mzwanele, 29, 31 Mbatha, Siphiwe, 48–9, 74–81, 115, 119–20, 156, 176 Mbeki, Thabo, 31, 92 Mdingi, Mzwandile (“Baba”), 62–4 Mkhaya Migrants Award, 172 Miya, Bhayiza, 74, 79–83, 99–101, 110–11, 114–16, 125 Mokonyane, Nomvula (mec: Safety and Security), 82, 116 Morales, Eva (Bolivia), 87 Moyo, Lydia, 48 Native Resettlement Act 19 of 1954, 83 Ndarala, Janice, 107–13, 117, 83 neoliberal (policies/views), 3–4, 6–7, 12, 14, 16–27, 31–7, 39–40, 43, 45–6, 52, 57, 61, 63, 84, 87, 89, 92–3, 97–8, 104, 117, 122–4, 155, 159–60, 180–1, 183, 185; and capitalism, 7; and state, 6, 27 neoliberalism, 7, 11–12, 16–23, 34, 45–6, 52, 87, 97, 158, 180 Ngwane, Trevor, 32, 45, 63–6 68, 83, 89, 92, 97, 131, 135, 160, 184 non-governmental Organization (ngo), 28, 32, 46 Nhlatseng, Sibusiso, 66 Nyezi, Nombulelo, 172–6

213

offensive war against capitalism, 4, 16 okm/tcc, 48. See also Thembelihle Committee open sanitation pits, 42, 113 Operation Khanyisa Movement (okm), 44–5, 48, 56–9, 85–6, 88–9, 98–101, 103, 105, 107, 110–11, 113, 116–17, 122, 129, 139, 150, 154, 157, 158, 178, 183 oppression, forms/manifestations of, 4, 6, 8, 14, 21, 37–8, 49, 52, 56, 68, 95, 97–8, 124, 157 Pan African Congress (pac), 57, 61, 91 Pan African Student Organisation, 62 participatory: budgeting, 24–5; development, 7, 11, 17, 21, 23, 52, 160, 180; governance, 50, 52–3; practices, 34; processes, 4; revolution, 3, 34; stance, 18; turn, 34 participatory action research (par), 6, 8 participatory rural appraisal (pra), 17 People’s Connection, 55, 58, 104–7, 112 People’s Parliament, 4, 50, 52–84, 102, 110, 113, 122, 140, 160–4, 176, 182–3 pit toilets, 42, 107–9 Planact, 28–9, 48 Podemos (Spain), 51, 87, 122 popular mobilization, 176–8 popular participation, 5–6, 11–14, 26, 28, 30–2, 36, 38, 40, 43, 46, 50–2, 132, 158–9, 161, 182, 184–5 Porto Alegre, Brazil, 5, 24–5 post-apartheid era, 31 post-apartheid government, 30 post-apartheid policies, 22, 26 post-apartheid South Africa, 22, 26,

214

Index

28–31, 38, 40, 47, 84, 93, 132–3, 141, 157 post-development (theory/thinker/thinking), 6–7, 16 power within movement, 182–5 protest action, 30, 116, 127, 130, 140, 155, 168–9 protests, 36, 40 racial discrimination, 95 Ralekgokgo, Mathata, 147–8 “rebellion of the poor,” 34 Reconstruction and Development Programme (rdp), 28, 92; empowerment of the poor, 29–30 Red Ants, 56–60, 66–7, 73, 79–81, 111 refuse disposal, 108 resistance, 34 Right to Know (r2k) campaign, 154 Roro, Donald, 62–3

sa Block Community Hall, 163 “Saint Development,” 16

sanco (previously aco). See South African National Civic Organisation sanitation, lack of, protesting for, 10, 40, 42, 107, 109, 112–13, 132, 184 Segodi, Siphiwe, 48–9, 62–70, 73, 94–6, 124–5, 129 self-emancipation, 6, 159 seri. See Socio-Economic Rights Institute service delivery protests, 34, 36 Soccer World Cup (2010), 105 Socio-Economic Rights Institute (seri), 41 Sophiatown, 83 South African National Civic Organisation (sanco), 28–31, 76 Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee

(secc), 57–8, 63, 69, 84, 88, 92–4, 96–9, 105, 111, 120, 139, 154 “state capture,” 33–4 Structural Adjustment Programmes (saps), 14–15 Syriza (Greece), 51, 87, 122 Tambo, Oliver, 90 Tatane, Andries, 40, 132 tcc. See Thembelihle Crisis Committee tcc stroke okm, tcm/okm, 98, 100, 103, 150 Thembelihle, 37; Ward Eight (Region G), 41–8 Thembelihle Crisis Committee (tcc), 41, 46–9, 55–9, 84, 96, 166, 177; formation of, 41, 61–4; ideological orientation, 37; non-institutional forms of engagement, 44; socialist organization, 47; timelines showing history of, 57–9 tribalism, 95 tripartite alliance, 88, 117 Tutu, Desmond, Archbishop, 76 United Democratic Front (udf), 28 United Front, the, (uf), 58, 121, 154, 179 United Nations Economic Social Council (unesco), 14 ventilated improved pit (vip) toilets, 42, 107–9 World Bank, 12, 17–23, 27, 32, 35, 44–6, 54, 92, 182 World Bank Participation Source Book, 18 World Development Report of

Index

2000/2001 on Poverty and Development, 20 World Social Forum debates, 24 World Summit for Sustainable Development (wssd), 93 xenophobia, 5, 53, 95, 122

215

Youth League (anc), 69, 109, 114, 157 Zuma, Jacob, 33, 59, 114, 152, 155–8, 161 Zwane, Simphiwe, 44, 49, 70–4, 110–11, 116–20, 161

216

Index