by Anna Selmeczi, Utrecht Law Review, April 2011
On October 14th 2009, the South African Constitutional Court judged
unconstitutional and so invalidated the so-called ‘Slums Act’; a
provincial legislation of KwaZulu-Natal that was also supposed to be the
blueprint for other provinces’ policies of eradicating informal
settlements. The decision signalled a major victory for the first
applicant Abahlali baseMjondolo, the country’s largest shack dwellers’
movement that has been struggling for a dignified life in the cities
since 2005. Beyond its relevance for the debates surrounding the
justiciability of social and economic rights so famously included in the
South African Constitution, when viewed from the perspective of the
shack dwellers’ mobilization, the case appears to manifest contemporary technologies of power; the various practices that shape urban spaces and
determine what kind of lives should inhabit them. Indeed, in
rationalizing the municipal effort to eliminate shack settlements from
urban centres with sanitary concerns and justifying evictions with the
will to improve poor people’s living conditions, the ‘Slums Act’
reflects biopolitics in action.
Accordingly, the Abahlali’s challenge to
the legislation might be reminiscent of Michel Foucault’s claim that,
as an unanticipated consequence of the inclusion of wo/men’s biological
life into politics, modern political struggles tend to centre on this
very aspect of human existence. That is, at least for the Foucault of The Will to Knowledge,
claims for the right to a dignified life or to adequate housing are
backlash effects of the emergence of biopower, and thus are correlated
to technologies of power which, in turn, had weakened the role of law in
governing populations.
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