Over much of this past winter, communities in shack
settlements across Cape Town took to the streets in some of South Africa's most
active civil-disobedience protests since 1994.
The protests gave rise to a great deal of commentary and finger-pointing.
I was disturbed by the double standard of the political rhetoric of politicians
and some nongovernmental organisations in the way they expected the protesters
to react in response to the violence the state and police subjects them to on a
daily basis.
I was also concerned about the way these bigger political
players moralised the debate, which shifted the focus from the perfectly
legitimate issues of service delivery and meaningful engagement raised by the
protesters to a soap opera in which analysis was replaced by empty electoral
hyperbole.
Three weeks ago, I met community members from one of the
protesting shack settlements, one of those that politicians were holding up as
a key example on the issue. Talking to the committee members of Sweet Home
Farm, an informal settlement of 15 000 people in the Philippi area, revealed a
yawning chasm between what the official players are saying about Sweet Home and
the realities on the ground.
I began to research Sweet Home, visiting the settlement a
number of times and talking to committee members, ordinary residents, members
of a rival committee and anyone who knew anything about the social and
political make-up of the area.
My findings were shocking. Not least because it showed that
Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille was wrong when she insinuated that the ANC
Youth League was involved in co-ordinating the protests at the settlement. They
were also surprising because they showed that neither the youth league nor any
other organisation affiliated to the ANC was a participant in the protests. In
fact, community members were not only protesting against the City of Cape Town
and its Democratic Alliance (DA) representative, they were also taking to the
streets because they were angry with their ANC councillor and his relationship
with a local henchman.
Indignation
My discussions with people on the ground quickly revealed
that the protests were not instigated or organised by any political parties
but, rather, were the result of the shack dwellers' indignation at the way in
which their dignity was routinely affronted by politicians and government
officials. Even the residents who vote for the DA in elections were protesting
and they were doing so with full knowledge of the political contradiction of
such actions.
As Nobanazi, a single mother of three, made clear to me when
I interviewed her: "We are not fighting because we want to mess things. We
are fighting because we are struggling. Inside our hearts there is no
peace."
Nobanzi is not a politician, a revolutionary, an
"anarchist" or even a "hooligan". She also does not condone
the destruction of property. And yet she participated in the mass civil
disobedience, which blockaded roads and destroyed traffic lights, because she
felt that this was the only way she and others could get the attention of
government.
Here is a list of some of the reasons why Sweet Home
residents believe they have been forced to protest in a manner that seeks to
cause disruption by, for example, blockading roads and destroying property:
- Their garbage is not taken away every week as it is in other parts of the city, leaving the settlement extremely dirty, unattractive and unhygienic;
- Most of their toilets are broken, leaking or otherwise unsanitary;
- The homes of only some residents have been connected to electricity;
- The open-air sewage canals built by the city are unsanitary and unsafe for children to play in. A nearby business has blocked the canal, with the result that raw sewage floods into homes when it rains;
- The unsanitary conditions are a threat to the health of residents, particularly children and the elderly;
- They are angry at Ward 80 councillor Thembinkosi Pupa for not working with them to meet their needs and for ignoring residents when they attempt to engage on issues; and
- They are angry at the mayor and other City of Cape Town officials for ignoring them and failing to engage meaningfully with the community on urgent development issues.
It is clear that the protesters are responding to the
structural violence of the state, to the structural violence of a society that
hates the poor, that denies them livelihoods and leaves them landless, homeless
and living in appalling conditions.
South African society shoots protesters already damaged by
poverty, massacres workers already victimised by their bosses and is so
unabashedly violent that it calls for yet further militarisation in our
workplaces and in our communities.
Shack dwellers
As they did at Marikana, the police have surrounded Sweet
Home and other shack settlements such as Barcelona, Europe and BM Section to
deter future road blockades.
Yet they cannot stop all shack dwellers from taking to the
streets all the time. In fact, just last week, shack dwellers from the small
railway town of Touws River took to the streets and blockaded the N1 freeway
for much of the day.
In Cape Town alone, there are hundreds of shack settlements
whose residents are fed up with the conditions in which they live. Any one of
them could rise up in protest at any moment.
A state that treats the most oppressed people in society as
if they were some sort of internal enemy, funded by a mysterious third force,
is a state that is completely failing to address the gross inequalities in our
society. Such an approach to governance shows that South Africa is engaging in
a new kind of colonialism.
The conspiracy theories that NGOs and politicians peddle to
try to explain away the rising tide of protest in Cape Town have little to do
with reality and are a further affront to the dignity of the city's poorest
residents.
Neocolonial policing methods may contain protest here and
there, but they are not capable of stopping it altogether.
Only a response by government that acknowledges the dignity
of poor black South Africans and actually attempts to work with them to address
their grievances can possibly stem the tide of these protests. Until then, De
Lille will merely be using the police to play musical chairs with protesting
shack dwellers.
Read the full report here.