Shack Dwellers Research Articles

The Role of the Church in Low-Income Housing in Namibia

The paper examines the church's role in Namibia's low-income housing process. The study followed the qualitative method; data were drawn from journals, books, newspapers, and other relevant material. The article argues that the church in Namibia plays a positive role in low-income housing and promotes Sustainable Development Goals. The findings reveal that the church established a foundation for the current Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia, an umbrella body of savings groups that address housing issues for low-income groups. The church plays a significant role by building houses for the poor, donating materials, and helping low-income communities alleviate poverty. The study supports participatory planning efforts in housing, highlighting that the church and faith-based organizations have a place in promoting Sustainable Development Goals, particularly goals 1, 2, and 11. It augments literature in religious studies, the built environment, and sustainable urban development by investigating the church's role in housing provision. In contrast, most studies focus on the church’s involvement in politics, culture, and socio-economic development. The study will benefit stakeholders who want to contribute towards goal 11 (Sustainable cities and communities). Additionally, the contribution will grow as the research serves as a novel contemporary reference for future studies in the same field.

Comparative digital protest cultures in South Africa and Tamil Nadu: #feesmustfall, #Jallikattu, and Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) - a case of surveillance and diasporic potential

This paper explores three protest movements differing in scale and scope in two regions in the world. #feesmustfall (2015-2016) was a social media movement in South Africa to protest against prohibitive hikes in university fees. #Jallikattu (2017) was a social media movement in Tamil Nadu (India) to lift a ban imposed by the Supreme Court of India against an ancient cultural sport with bulls. Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) is a South African social media movement to raise issues related to shack dwellers. While there is literature focusing on these movements individually (Bosch 2016, Kalaiyarasan 2017, Mdlalose 2014), a comparative approach offers some alternate insights into how state power manifests in the age of digital capitalism. Habermas (1987, 1989) theorised the transformation of the public sphere and key to understanding how these publics contest existing power structures is his explication of authentic communicative action. Using Fuchs’s (2016) and Zuboff’s (2019) analyses of social media activism, we examine police brutality and surveillance in these three movements. The classical model of diaspora (Harutyunyan 2012) is introduced to show how it manifests in two of the protest movements, and contemporary notions of diaspora (Grossman 2019: 1265) are explored to see what they could offer to diverse protest cultures.

Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements by Trevor Ngwane

Reviewed by: Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements by Trevor Ngwane Mueni wa Muiu Ngwane, Trevor. Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements. London: Pluto Press, 2021. Can people who live in shacks teach us about democracy? Trevor Ngwane begins this book with the following question: Ngingalitholaphi ikomiti lalendawo? Where can I find this place's committee? To answer this question, Ngwane sets out to study four informal settlements of South Africa's nine provinces. Organizing among shack communities can be traced back to protests [End Page 222] against forced removals by the apartheid regime. They occupied private land because the state failed to provide adequate housing. Sometimes communities were forced to live in "temporary" housing for forty years. In seeking to answer this question, Ngwane draws back a curtain and reveals a world that few know about. He visited forty-six informal settlements, of which forty-five had committees. He distinguishes between autonomous committees and people's committees. The latter are formed by the state or NGOs. His focus is mainly on the self-organization of the committees, not their physical organizations. These include ten settlements each in Gauteng, North West, and Kwa Zulu Natal, and sixteen in Eastern Cape. The smallest settlement had twenty shacks, and the largest had eight thousand. Most had between one hundred and five hundred shacks, with Alexandria (Johannesburg) having a thousand shacks a month. The number of informal settlements increased between 1990 and 1994 with the elimination of bans on political organizations and apartheid laws. Most of the settlements are named after the pioneers, how the place was occupied, or after major political leaders. Seventy percent of the settlements have electricity, while 65 percent have access to water taps and 39 percent have long-drop toilets. The first committees set up are the people's committees, which are followed by ward committees (state). There were people's committees in thirty-five settlements. Life in shantytowns is difficult. One has to struggle for every single thing that other communities take for granted, from being alive to getting water and toilets. Amakomiti (Zulu for "committee") people learned to depend on themselves from defense and plot allocation to basic services. Most of these committees rely on their experiences in rural areas to govern their communities. Sometimes they work alongside township organizations but on other occasions they don't, depending on the issues at stake. Ngwane calls the discussions and activities of these committees "democracy on the margins." This is the development and practice of local democratic practices and cultures by neglected communities. It gives them agency where they are not victims. This book explores different committees, their history and roles in democracy on the margins. Popular committees in the shacks are an aspect of a democratic practice and ethos that is not fully understood. The ANC had committees in eight of the forty-six settlements. There were community police forums in five settlements. Five settlements had community development forums, which monitor local construction and development. Twenty-five settlements had more than one committee. Whether committees succeeded or failed depended on their accountability and [End Page 223] transparency in meeting expectations. Relationships between committees and the state vary from antagonistic to symbiotic. Most communities are forced to connect their own services, from electricity to water. Most shacks in South Africa are located in close to mines in Rustenburg, where the unemployment rate is 40 percent. It is also the most unequal place in the world. Rustenburg produces 70 percent of the world's platinum. In-migration is 7 percent from neighboring countries. Based on official figures, 17.4 percent of the people live in twenty-four informal settlements, but independent researchers put the number at 40 percent. Fifty percent have no monthly income. There are two views about shack dwellers: shack dwellers as part of workers' movements, and therefore with a lot to gain, and shack dwellers as distinct from workers' movements, with little to gain. Shack dwellers organize settlement, order, and security. Some are better organized than others. For example, the Power Group in Crossroads, an informal settlement near Cape Town, was organized by women who led protests for services for four months...

Fanonian practices in South Africa: From Steve Biko to Abahlali baseMjondolo (Nigel Gibson)

Frantz Fanon, the Algerian theorist of revolution and social change, continues living through his profoundly luminous work that remains influential to the thinking and actions of many a people across the world even today. In Fanonian Practices in South Africa (2011), which comprises an introduction and five chapters, Nigel Gibson grapples with the important question of the relevance of Fanon's thought, 50 years after his death in 1961, to the South African situation especially from the time of Steve Biko to the time of the birth of the shack dwellers' movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo (Abahlali) in Durban on 19 March 2005. Gibson acknowledges that the idea of Fanonian Practices is not limited to South Africa but relevant also for other African countries. Elsewhere, Fanon's ideas have been exported to Black theology of liberation by scholars such as James Cone in the United States of America (USA) and Paulo Freire in Latin America.

Addressing Unintentional Exclusion of Vulnerable and Mobile Households in Traditional Surveys in Kathmandu, Dhaka, and Hanoi: a Mixed-Methods Feasibility Study

The methods used in low- and middle-income countries’ (LMICs) household surveys have not changed in four decades; however, LMIC societies have changed substantially and now face unprecedented rates of urbanization and urbanization of poverty. This mismatch may result in unintentional exclusion of vulnerable and mobile urban populations. We compare three survey method innovations with standard survey methods in Kathmandu, Dhaka, and Hanoi and summarize feasibility of our innovative methods in terms of time, cost, skill requirements, and experiences. We used descriptive statistics and regression techniques to compare respondent characteristics in samples drawn with innovative versus standard survey designs and household definitions, adjusting for sample probability weights and clustering. Feasibility of innovative methods was evaluated using a thematic framework analysis of focus group discussions with survey field staff, and via survey planner budgets. We found that a common household definition excluded single adults (46.9%) and migrant-headed households (6.7%), as well as non-married (8.5%), unemployed (10.5%), disabled (9.3%), and studying adults (14.3%). Further, standard two-stage sampling resulted in fewer single adult and non-family households than an innovative area-microcensus design; however, two-stage sampling resulted in more tent and shack dwellers. Our survey innovations provided good value for money, and field staff experiences were neutral or positive. Staff recommended streamlining field tools and pairing technical and survey content experts during fieldwork. This evidence of exclusion of vulnerable and mobile urban populations in LMIC household surveys is deeply concerning and underscores the need to modernize survey methods and practices.

Living Ubuntu: the struggles of Abahlali Base Mjondolo as an African philosophy in the making

What does it mean to engage in a philosophy of struggle and emancipation in our South African context? As part of my MA research I took an internship with Abahlali BaseMjondolo, a shack dwellers’ movement whose office is based in central Durban. Their members reside in various settlements within KwaZulu Natal and the Eastern Cape. Whilst interning at the movement I conducted interviews with some of their members, using this experience to gain insight into the movement’s theory and philosophy. Here I was challenged by what it means to do research using narrative as the foundation of my work. It is through narrative that one can tackle the problematic representations of black people in academia and society. I argue that in this movement a philosophy is at work. Their philosophy is based on the lived experience of struggle. As producers of knowledge, I argue that they represent the workings of Ubuntu. Using Maboge B. Ramose’s (2002) explanation of ‘Ubuntu as philosophy’ I show how it can help us understand what it means to be human and how this is being affirmed in spaces of struggle. As agents of struggle we (black people) must be recognised for how we create knowledge. Ubuntu becomes the means through which we can map out the ways in such recognition can be understood and which an African philosophy is being being practiced. It is this recognition that is at the heart of the movement’s philosophy of ‘Abahlalism’ which demonstrates the complexity of black experience in the space of social movement struggles.Key words: SOTL, scholarship of teaching and learning, Ubuntu, African philosophy, decolonial theoryHow to cite this article:Khosi, M. 2020. Living Ubuntu: The struggles of Abahlali Base Mjondolo as an African philosophy in the making. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South. v. 4, n. 1, p. 26-36. April 2020. Available at: https://sotl-south-journal.net/?journal=sotls&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=128This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The Trinity – God, Federation, and Community: A Mixed-Methodological Analysis of Religion and Ethnicity among the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia

How are religious involvement and community-mobilizing related for poor Namibian women? This mixed - methodological study examines the influence of ethnicity, attitudinal, and behavioral traits on religious affiliation and related experiences for 258 female members of the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia, a network of neighborhood-based savings groups that attempts to provide affordable housing and related infrastructure services to poor women. In addition to its practical benefits, we consider whether the Federation represents a proxy-church for members. We assess the following research questions: With which churches are Federation women affiliated? Do their ethnicities or views and decisions about the Federation affect their religious ties? Do results suggest that the Federation provides outcomes commonly associated with churches? Results based on statistical and content analyses illustrate differences in religious affiliation and experiential variations based on ethnicity as well as church-like benefits of Federation involvement.

A Contested Commons: Competition for Public Land in the Free State

This paper traces the history of the ‘Butleng’ commonage in the Free State, South Africa. Commonage is municipally owned land available for public use. The post-apartheid government provided grants for the purchase of commonage to assist poor township residents and to provide a ‘stepping stone’ for emerging Black farmers. This article outlines how plans for collective control and use of the commonage have been overwhelmed by individual accumulation strategies, which illustrate tensions within the township, notably class differentiation and gendered claims to economic resources. An emerging township elite, centred on the batho ba sebeletsang mmuso (those who work for government), quickly prevailed over attempts by the baruri ba kgale (old rich/influential) township residents and White officials to implement a managed commonage programme. Plans for managed grazing were scuppered when fences across much of the area were cut, allowing uncontrolled access. Competition for land saw women pushed aside, with land allocated for horticultural projects overrun by cattle owners. An occupation of commonage land for stands (allocated spaces for residential buildings), primarily by backyard shack dwellers, posed a direct challenge to the authority of the African National Congress-run municipality and the squatters were evicted. Some parts of the commonage have, for complex reasons, remained fenced and are therefore assets available for individual farming. Attempts to maintain public control over these fields or camps have also failed, with occupational titles/rights opaque and linked to connections within the local state. The failure to manage or develop the commonage collectively has resulted in a process of creeping privatisation. Attempts to democratically organise communities for sustainable development have proved no match for individualistic accumulation strategies championed by interest groups formed around new configurations of power. The article underlines how the transformation of South African society, including land reform, needs to take cognisance of the sociological terrain.

Feasibility of Innovative Tools and Methods to Improve Household Surveys in Complex Urban Settings: Multiple Methods Analysis of the Surveys for Urban Equity (SUE) Study in Kathmandu, Dhaka, and Hanoi

Background: The methods used in low- and middle-income country (LMIC) household surveys have not changed in four decades; however, LMIC societies have changed substantially. This mismatch may result in unintentional exclusion of vulnerable and mobile urban populations. We compare three survey method innovations with standard survey methods in Kathmandu, Dhaka, and Hanoi, and summarize feasibility of our innovative methods in terms of time, cost, skill requirements, and experiences. Methods: We used descriptive statistics and regression techniques to compare respondent characteristics in samples drawn with innovative versus standard survey designs and household definitions, adjusting for sample probability weights and clustering. Feasibility of innovative methods was evaluated using a thematic framework analysis of focus group discussions with survey field staff, and via survey planner budgets. Findings: We found that a common household definition excluded single adult (46.9%) and migrant headed households (6.7%), as well as non-married (8.5%), unemployed (10.5%), disabled (9.3%), and studying (14.3%) adults. Further, standard two-stage sampling resulted in fewer single adult and non-family households than an innovative one-stage design; however, two-stage sampling resulted in more tent and shack dwellers. Our survey innovations provided good value for money and field staff experiences were neutral or positive. Staff recommended streamlining field tools and pairing technical and survey content experts during fieldwork. Interpretation: This evidence of unintentional exclusion of vulnerable and mobile urban populations in LMIC household surveys is deeply concerning, and underscores the need to modernize survey methods and practices. Funding: UK Medical Research Council and UK Economic and Social Research Council. Declaration of Interest: All authors declare no conflicts of interest. Ethical Approval: Ethics approvals were obtained from the University of Leeds (ref:MREC16-137), University of Southampton (ref:26819), Nepal Health Research Council (ref:1761), Bangladesh Medical Research Council (ref:BMRC/NREC/RP/2016-2019/317), and Hanoi University of Public Health (ref:324/2017/YTCC-HD3).

Everyday forms of resistance and claim making in Durban South Africa

ABSTRACT South Africa has high levels of visible protest, which occur in parallel with less visible forms of protest. This paper considers the quieter forms of resisting in Durban drawing from two cases studies: informal street traders and shack dwellers. It applies Scott’s concept of ‘everyday resistance’ and Bayat’s notion of ‘quiet encroachment’. Street traders represent an ‘invisible’ power, preferring to avoid engagements with authorities and undermining power structures through a repertoire of daily trading tactics. Shack dwellers are more of a ‘visible’ power where protest is entrenched as part of the settlement ‘culture’ reflecting an ‘offensive’. Abbreviations: NGO: non-governmental organisation; ABM: Abahlali base Mjondolo; ANC: African National Congress; SEDA: Small Enterprise Development Agency

“He Will Know How to Explain”

AbstractThis article applies Partha Chatterjee's concept of political society to the case of postwar urban Angola in order to draw attention to the everyday ways in which popular politics are practiced in Africa beyond episodic moments of popular revolt. It looks at the case of the Zango social-housing project, which was created to resettle evicted shack dwellers in Luanda. While in the initial stages of the project responses to resettlement were marked by bouts of protest and resistance against the state, over time these shifted to the emergence and formulation of informal strategies, arrangements, and understandings to claim, gain, and explain access to housing in the project, often in collaboration with state officials. Although the application of Chatterjee's work to Angola opens up useful avenues for comparative analysis, it also shows the particularities of the workings of popular politics under conditions of nondemocratic rule. It is by studying the daily workings of popular politics in relation to the actual and fragmented workings of the state that insight can be gained into the variegated nature of political practice and agency across the global south.

Co-producing Windhoek: the contribution of the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia

Over the last three decades, Windhoek, Namibia has grown substantially. In line with the general urban growth, Windhoek’s informal settlements have expanded, making it ever more pressing to secure basic services and suitable housing for residents of these settlements. This paper, drawing from the author’s PhD completed at the University of Manchester in 2013, documents how one social movement, the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia (SDFN), has challenged and collaborated with the City of Windhoek to improve living conditions. The analysis draws on varied data sources – including extensive interviews with government and federation representatives, the SDFN’s own data, and maps showing the spatial transformation of the city – to trace the recent history of co-production in Windhoek. The continuing marginalization of the city’s informal settlement dwellers points to a need for reimagining Windhoek’s residential development and integrating this into planning, as well as working with social movements like the SDFN to ensure that reforms are grounded in local realities and reflect the aspirations of those on the city’s northwest fringe.

Building Homes and Building Lives: Benefits of Involvement in the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia

Abstract The Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia (SDFN) was established in 1992 as a women-lead membership-based organization (MBOP) of the poor to secure affordable housing and infrastructure services through savings and sweat-equity groups across thirteen Namibian regions. Yet, to our knowledge, a study on this organization that focuses on the voices of members to assess how they understand and prioritize Federasi involvement has not been performed. Theoretically informed by black feminism, this multidisciplinary, mixed-methodological project considers the benefits of participation for 281 members. Although anecdotal information suggests that the vast majority of women participate to secure stable housing, content and bivariate analyses illustrate the primacy of psychological benefits and collective mobilization.

Leadership Amidst Poverty: a Mixed-Methodological Analysis of the Shack Dweller Federation of Namibia

Can leaders emerge amidst chronic poverty? This mixed-methodological study examines the influence of demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral traits on self-defined leadership status for 281 female members of the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia, a network of neighborhood-based savings groups that attempts to provide affordable housing and related infrastructure services to impoverished black women. We consider the following research questions: Do Federation women consider themselves leaders? Are certain women more likely to consider themselves leaders than others? Results based on statistical and content analyses, and informed by leadership theory, suggest the importance of ethnicity, education, Pentecostal and mainline religious affiliations, sweat equity, and leadership interest in explaining whether women consider themselves leaders. Representative themes also illustrate some of the nuanced ways leadership is understood and experienced.

Making Freedom: Apartheid, Squatter Politics, and the Struggle for Home by Anne-Maria Makhulu

Reviewed by: Making Freedom: Apartheid, Squatter Politics, and the Struggle for Home by Anne-Maria Makhulu Lené Le Roux Making Freedom: Apartheid, Squatter Politics, and the Struggle for Home Anne-Maria Makhulu. Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2015. 273pp.; maps, photos, notes, bibliog., and index. $23.95 paperback (ISBN 978-0-8223-5966-1) Anne-Maria Makhulu has written a book about 'the geography of freedom' (Makhulu, 2015: 43). She affirms the inseparability of geography and democracy as she tells a story of practical politics of those who have been disenfranchised and marginalised in South Africa. A parallel is drawn between the necessity for daily home-making in a world that wishes to dehumanise the lives of shack-dwellers and their struggle for freedom–the struggle of the forgotten ones. Throughout her book Makhulu weaves in global and local economic shifts, complexities of social reproduction, as well as racialized and gendered politics to frame the study. It is a thoughtful, sobering and provocative read for anyone interested in the recent history of South Africa's urban development on a highly political landscape. In this book Makhulu is able to map what she refers to as a 'geography of freedom'. Making freedom is an ethnographic study that traces the precarious lives and steadily insurgent life-making of shack dwellers in Crossroads, Cape Town, from 1970 to the mid-2000s. By 1970 the country's Apartheid government regime was maturing into its third decade of existence. The Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents Act 67 of 1952, commonly referred to as 'the pass law', determined whether black Africans could legally reside within the city, close to work. It laid the foundation for the illegal rural to urban migration of millions of black Africans who were forced to reside in homelands, despite the necessity and desire to socially reproduce in cities. With the shortage of public housing in townships and the prohibition for Africans to own land in urban areas designated for white people, and the sheer lack of affordable housing for the poor, of which the majority were African, meant that newcomers had to occupy land on the urban periphery, adjacent to formal townships, illegally. They built their own homes, using any material available. These came to be known as 'shacks'. With a panoramic and multi-scalar view of the political and economic affairs across the eras, Makhulu (2015) walks [End Page 388] us through the demise of the National Party (NP), that instituted the apartheid regime, to the rise of the African National Party (ANC), that transitioned the country into democracy. She draws from Bayat's (1997) notion of 'quiet encroachment' to show the role that women, especially black squatter women, played in changing the political landscape of South Africa through home-making and livelihood strategies. She invokes the powerful position of 'protest politics based on singular motivations over and above higher-order imperatives' which has been and is largely dismissed by the local patrilineal and mainstream national politics that seek to centralise the 'symbolic and ideological politics of men' (Makhulu, 2015: 89). Makhulu cleverly and methodically works through the structural economic shift toward neoliberalism and the impact of this on the provision of basic human rights, such as housing, water and electricity. The pressure on the ANC to ensure reparations materialise for previously disadvantaged South Africans, whilst structural adjustment policies insisted on fiscal austerity, have resulted in failed urban spatial transformation, record-breaking service delivery protests and deepening levels inequality. She draws attention to particular actors that continue to control and benefit from the neoliberal economy, and articulates the relevant mechanisms (e.g. state sanctioned programs) that allow them to do so. Finally, Makhulu fleshes out what the 'trickle-down effect' of the free market system looks like in a postcolonial, new democracy that has been deindustrialised and open to the expansion of the financial sector. She uses Arendt and Foucault's theorisations around biopolitics to situate the precarious lives of marginalised masses that are forced to survive off-the-grid with skyrocketing utility prices and the absence of waged labour. She unpacks the self-austerity and entrepreneurial practices of the poor, using rapidly expanding informal market...

The killing fields of KZN: Local government elections, violence and democracy in 2016

Various government initiatives focus on the promotion of social cohesion for nation building. The impact of social cohesion on levels of violence is also the subject of research. This article argues that despite official rhetoric organs of state - are used in KwaZulu-Natal to serve party political interests by targeting cohesive groupings struggling for their constitutional rights. Violence is promoted and nation building retarded. The main case study cited is that of violence-wracked Glebelands hostel in Durban. Since it is also argued that what is happening in Glebelands is not an isolated case reference is also made to the similar targeting of the shack dwellers’ movement Abahali baseMjondolo.

The killing fields of KZN: Local government elections, violence and democracy in 2016

Various government initiatives focus on the promotion of social cohesion for nation building. The impact of social cohesion on levels of violence is also the subject of research. This article argues that despite official rhetoric organs of state - are used in KwaZulu-Natal to serve party political interests by targeting cohesive groupings struggling for their constitutional rights. Violence is promoted and nation building retarded. The main case study cited is that of violence-wracked Glebelands hostel in Durban. Since it is also argued that what is happening in Glebelands is not an isolated case reference is also made to the similar targeting of the shack dwellers’ movement Abahali baseMjondolo.

A new urban agenda?

The text for what is termed “The New Urban Agenda” is being prepared for agreement by national government representatives at Habitat III, the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development in Quito in October 2016. The most pressing issue for this Agenda is not so much in what it says. We can predict with some certainty that there will be ringing endorsements for urban centres to be resilient, sustainable, safe and inclusive...Ideally, it will be shorter and more coherent than its predecessor, the Habitat Agenda endorsed at Habitat II in 1996, which ran to over 100 pages.(1) But what will determine the effectiveness of any New Urban Agenda is whether it is relevant to urban governments and urban dwellers, especially those whose needs are not currently met, and gets their buy-in. This means that it has to be clear and relevant to “slum”(2)/shack dwellers and mayors, as well as to other urban politicians, civil servants and other civil society groups. And what it recommends has be within their capacities. It should also set out a framework to support these local groups to meet goals and targets that have already been established – for instance, within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement.(3) Dangerous climate change will not be avoided unless urban governments all around the world act on both adaptation and mitigation. So is this local relevance possible – when it is national government representatives that are developing the text and that will have to approve it at Habitat III? Will national government delegates endorse an agenda that supports this local relevance with needed strategies, plans and resources? If they do, they will have to go far beyond the SDGs. The Millennium Development Goals and the SDGs are full of goals and targets (i.e. what has to be done), but very weak on how, by whom (in each locality) and with what support. Then there is the issue of the New Urban Agenda’s length and detail. If it is to clarify the implementation of the SDGs in urban areas, then it has to address almost all the SDG objectives and the many groups or sectors with legitimate claims to having their views represented. The livelihoods and health of almost all the planet’s

Sharing reflections on inclusive sanitation

This paper draws on sanitation innovations in Blantyre (Malawi), Chinhoyi (Zimbabwe), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and Kitwe (Zambia) driven by slum(1)/shack dweller federations to consider what an inclusive approach to sanitation would involve. This includes what is possible for low-income households when there is little or no external support, no piped water supply and no city sewers to connect to. The paper discusses low-income households’ choices in situations where households can only afford US$ 3–4 per month for sanitation (for instance between communal, shared and household provision). It also considers the routes to both spatial and social inclusion (including the role of loan finance in the four cities) and its political underpinnings. In each of the four cities, the community engagement in sanitation intended from the outset to get the engagement and support of local authorities for city-wide sanitation provision.

Sweet Home: A Preliminary Investigation into the Socio-Political Character of Recent Road Blockades by Protesting Shack Dwellers in South Africa*

For much of the winter of 2012, communities in shack settlements across Cape Town took to the streets in some of the most active civil disobedience protests since 1994. Knowing that the mainstream political terrain often seeks to obfuscate and mislead the public about the true nature of these protests, this paper investigates claims by politicians from the Democratic Alliance (DA) that these protests were being coordinated by the Youth League of the African National Congress (ANCYL). These big political players moralize the debate, shifting the focus from the perfectly legitimate issues of service delivery and demands for meaningful engagement. Speaking directly to community members of Sweet Home Farm, an informal settlement of 15,000 people in the Philippi area, revealed a yawning chasm between what official players are saying about Sweet Home and the actual realities on the ground.