Squatter Camps Research Articles

Dangerous and Endangered Youth: Social Structures and Determinants of Violence

Structural violence is violence that is permissible, even encouraged. It refers to the invisible social machinery of inequality that reproduces social relations of exclusion and marginalization via ideologies, stigmas, and dangerous discourses (such as "youth violence" itself) attendant to race, class, sex, and other invidious distinctions. Structural violence "naturalizes" poverty, sickness, hunger, and premature death, erasing their social and political origins so that they are taken for granted and no one is held accountable except the poor themselves. Structural violence also refers to the ease with which humans are capable of reducing the socially vulnerable (even those from their own class and community) into expendable non-persons, thus allowing the licence--even the duty--to kill them. I exemplify this through two ethnographic critical case studies: the operation of a virulent death squad in Northeast Brazil that mobilized the support of ordinary people in an almost genocidal attack against Afro-Brazilian street kids and young "marginals"; and the uneasy truce with, and incomplete integration of "dangerous and endangered" youth still living in squatter camps and shack communities of urban South Africa.

The Suffering Body of the City

S ince 1990, parallel to the period of transition to a democratic society, the AIDS epidemic in South Africa has increased dramatically. The level of HIV infection in the adult population (ages 15–49) rose from 1 percent in 1990 to more than 20 percent in 2000. However, this figure conceals a disparity in the distribution of the disease. The townships are affected far more than the largely white suburbs, while in the townships themselves the highest levels are found in the so-called squatter camps (Shisana and Simbayi 2002).1 The combination of pandemic and democracy has wrought changes specific to sufferers living on the periphery of Johannesburg. People obtained their freedom and fell sick at the same time. The newly acquired sovereignty has enabled individuals to explore previously unavailable urban spaces, to develop innovative forms of political mobilization, and to access, in new ways, health services that had once

Squatters, Space, and Belonging in the Underdeveloped City

City air makes you free. This medieval German maxim referring to the city as a haven from the harsh laws of feudal vassalage might serve as an ironic epigraph for Patrick Chamoiseau’s novel Texaco. Near the beginning of Chamoiseau’s third novel, his narrator, the so-called Word Scratcher, writes that “to escape the night of slavery and colonialism, Martinique’s black slaves and mulattoes will, one generation after another, abandon the plantations, the fi elds, and the hills to throw themselves into the conquest of the cities.” 1 In Texaco the powerful matriarch of a squatter camp, Marie-Sophie Laborieux, recounts the epic battles she and her ancestors fought to gain a home in the city. This struggle has helped shape urban space, creating a highly cosmopolitan but also extremely polarized social geography in the Martinican capital of Fort-de-France. The fragmented geography of urban space described in Chamoiseau’s novel ensures that the freedom of the city will be alloyed with suffering, its cosmopolitanism shot through with inequality and unrest. In The Age of Extremes, Eric Hobsbawm argues that the most convulsive social change of the turbulent century that had just closed was not what one might expect. 2 It was not the revolution in Russia, or the two world wars, or the development of the atom bomb and the cold war, or the decolonization of the third world. No, for Hobsbawm the greatest change of the twentieth century was the death of the peasantry. In 1900, the vast majority of humanity lived in rural areas. Of course, the percentage of rural residents was signifi cantly higher in the third world than in the industrialized core countries. Yet by the close of the century, the majority of human beings lived not in the countryside but in cities. This change has been particularly wrenching in the third world. There, policies implemented by international development agencies such as the World Bank have pushed poor subsistence farmers off their lands by the hundreds of millions and forced them into the derelict squatter camps that ring the megacities of the developing world. Every year, a staggering 20 to 30 million of the world’s poor leave their villages and move to cities. 3 The last century has, in other words, witnessed a process of accumulation by dispossession on an unprecedented scale. 4 The powerful global cities of the developed world are an increasingly

Capitalising on privilege: home-based businesses and informal settlements as a post-apartheid phenomenon in Indian dominated residential areas in Durban, South Africa

This paper is an ethnographic account of fieldwork that began in 1999 when African squatter camps in the Greater Durban metropolitan area accommodated people almost equal in number to the settled tax-paying Indian residents in the vicinity. While their numbers were seen as an almost destabilising factor in the region, and prompted many to label them as ‘land invaders’, others saw a window of opportunity opening up for them by virtue of their position as homeowners. The response was to provide a service along the lines of mainly grocery retailing. The closure of many licensed shops that were vulnerable to holdups and theft created space for a nascent shopkeeper class that capitalised on the opportunities that the squatters provided as a captive market. The paper demonstrates, through case studies of Indian informal traders, how the emergence of these home-based businesses, on the one hand, actually served as a catalyst for racial friction, and on the other hand, as a test case for racial integration in post-apartheid South Africa. It also intensively examines the time that the service providers put into their work, the inputs of labour from family members and the relationships they built with their African clientele. The contradictions brought about by the social tensions and the cordial relationships that emerged between Indians and Africans demonstrate the organic development of a new multi-racial environment.

Die behuisingsbeplanning van informele nedersettings en plakkerskampe

The planning of housing for informal settlements and squatter camps In South Africa approximately 7 million people live in informal settlements and squatter camps. Constitutional provisions and moral considerations necessitate the urgent involvement of different segments of society to alleviate the plight of this hapless part of the South African population. Since the early nineties the government’s policy regarding squatters has changed from the criminalisation of squatting and the destruction of shelters to the acknowledgement of the right to access to adequate housing and the principle that an unlawful occupier may only be forcibly removed if alternative housing is available. This has led to a massive influx of squatters to squatter camps on the fringes of towns and cities. This article deals with the factors that lead to the establishment of informal settlements and squatter camps, the types of informal settlements and the way in which such settlements and squatter camps can be upgraded to become adequate housing. The consequences of self-help schemes and pirate urbanisation, and especially the advantages and disadvantages of such measures, are critically evaluated. The administration of housing in informal settlements by local authorities, the provision of basic services and the eventual upgrading of informal occupation to ownership are discussed. To facilitate this, the government policy regarding housing planning should be further implemented by removing practical obstacles as soon as possible.

Territorial strategies of South African informal dwellers

Squatters and informal dwellers are no longer understood as helpless people excluded from the mainstream political economy: New research, as well as our own fieldwork in Johannesburg and Cape Town, stress the fact that they too are actors in the city. Interviews and life histories in different squatter camps such as Lenasia, Thembalihle, Kliptown and Newtown in Johannesburg, Lower Crossroads in Cape Town point to a complex story: squatters are a diverse people, of different origins, ways of life, income and income sources. They have also developed different socio-spatial strategies. We will analyse and map these strategies both statically and dynamically: Thus, squatting can of course be the result of absolute poverty, of the dire need of finding a shelter. It can also be a choice, the solution to have access to cheaper and independent accommodation or to private and family space. These strategies inform the socio-geographical environment of the squatter: different social networks are mobilised and used, different landscapes are produced in these soft spaces, neither rural (in terms of population and activity) nor urban (distance and lack of urban services).

Squatting as a transition problem in South Africa

This paper applies principles of transition to land tenure and squatting in South Africa. Political transition in South Africa reassigned political property rights, which produced contestable, and rent‐seeking incentives for squatting as a means to privatize land and redistribute wealth. Government failure to establish and protect private property rights in a squatter camp resulted in common‐pool problems that resisted private and public resolution with consequent rent dissipation and social loss. In response to this retreat from duty, informal agents emerged to claim their own share of the prize. Without enforceable rules of capture, the growth of squatter camps in South Africa will continue.JEL classification: D7, H8, K1, K4, R1, R4.

The reproduction of ethnicity through children and chilhood: education in post-apartheid South Africa

This paper is based on fieldwork on the emerging pattern of schooling in post-Apartheid South Africa: 1994–1999. The information was gathered in racially mixed suburbs that are home mainly to people of Indian and African backgrounds. The schools in these suburbs were attended only by people of Indian back-ground during Apartheid, but radically changed in their pupil compositions soon after the demise of segregationist politics. Children from African squatter camps, which developed within these suburbs, as well as from neighbouring African townships, began attending schools in these areas. The rapid increase in numbers gave rise to intense competition for space between Indian and African children in these schools. This movement of African children resulted in an outcry on the part of numerous Indian parents who were property owners and taxpayers in the suburbs where they lived. These parents then considered they had to re-evaluate their children's educational options. They sent their children to distant, previously “all white” schools, despite the excess cost involved. This paper examines the dynamics of this rapid transformation and comments on the way in which educational space has served to reinforce identities and to change aspirations and expectations among people of Indian origin in Durban, South Africa.

An Electronic Interview with Sindiwe Magona

Sindiwe Magona is the author of a two-volume autobiography, To My Children’s Children (1990) and Forced to Grow (1992). She has also published two collections of short stories, Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night (1991) and Push-Push! & Other Stories (1996). Her first novel, Mother to Mother, inspired by the politically-motivated murder of Amy Biehl, an American Fulbright scholar conducting research in South Africa in 1993, was published in 1998.Magona was born in August 1943 in Gungululu, a village near Tsolo, in the former Transkei. She grew up in the squatter camps and townships of Cape Town. She holds degrees from the University of South Africa and Columbia University. She is presently working for the United Nations in New York, where she has held a full-time position since 1984. In 1992, she was awarded an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Hartwick College, New York.The following interview was conducted in November 2000 through email correspondences between the author and two scholars at the University of Pretoria. These are Siphokazi Koyana, a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, and Professor Rosemary Gray of the English Department.

Hepatitis E in South Africa: Evidence for sporadic spread and increased seroprevalence in rural areas

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a major cause of non-A, non-B hepatitis in developing countries. Factors influencing sporadic spread of hepatitis E are unclear. We examined anti-HEV seroprevalence and demographic data from 407 urban and 360 rural black South African adults living in formal housing, squatter camps, or mud huts. Anti-HEV seroprevalence ranged from 5.8% to 19.1% (mean 10.7%) in the different regions. Mean urban and rural rates were 6.6% and 15.3%, respectively (P = 0.0001). Rural mud hut dwellers, using unchlorinated river water, were at greater risk (17.4%) than rural villagers (5.3%; P = 0.008). A linear relation was found between seroprevalence and age, suggesting sporadic spread. The high prevalence in mud hut dwellers suggests that contaminated water plays a major role in HEV spread in South Africa. Routine chlorination or boiling of river drinking water before consumption may reduce HEV infection. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Hepatitis E in South Africa: evidence for sporadic spread and increased seroprevalence in rural areas.

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a major cause of non-A, non-B hepatitis in developing countries. Factors influencing sporadic spread of hepatitis E are unclear. We examined anti-HEV seroprevalence and demographic data from 407 urban and 360 rural black South African adults living in formal housing, squatter camps, or mud huts. Anti-HEV sero-prevalence ranged from 5.8% to 19.1% (mean 10.7%) in the different regions. Mean urban and rural rates were 6.6% and 15.3%, respectively (P = 0.0001). Rural mud hut dwellers, using unchlorinated river water, were at greater risk (17.4%) than rural villagers (5.3%; P = 0.008). A linear relation was found between seroprevalence and age, suggesting sporadic spread. The high prevalence in mud hut dwellers suggests that contaminated water plays a major role in HEV spread in South Africa. Routine chlorination or boiling of river drinking water before consumption may reduce HEV infection.

Bridging ?expert? and ?local? knowledge for counter-disaster planning in urban South Africa

Rapid and spatially concentrated urbanization in South Africa has brought with it significant health and safety hazards. Political democracy and the dismantling of apartheid open the possibility of vigorous community participation in the identification and mitigation of such hazards. However there are severe obstacles to combining the expert knowledge of outside scientists with local knowledge of residents of the townships and squatter camps. This papers describes the common genesis of urban environmental hazards and the split between expert and local knowledge. They arise as twin products of the apartheid system that destroyed rural livelihoods, forcing Africans into over-crowded urban enclaves, denied them most educational opportunities and skilled employment, and denigrated local knowledge and self-help initiatives. This legacy must be overcome in the interest of hazard reduction in the New South Africa.

The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology

The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology

South Africa: The sustainable development challenge

inequalities of any country in the world,' there is serious overcrowding in the townships, squatter camps and environmentally degraded homelands, the economy remains heavily dependent on the export of non-renewable minerals with little beneficiation and a country with a rich racial and cultural mix has been bitterly divided by institutionalised racial segregation. Raising the challenge of sustainable development can help the South African policy debate go forward in new directions. At the heart of the problem is how best to move from separate development to sustainable development. The most pressing sustainable development challenge facing the country is improving the livelihoods of the poorest. As a result of the apartheid system the black population was uniquely disadvantaged. Per capita income of the black population in 1990 was only 12% of that of the whites and for coloureds and Indians it remained appalling low, 25% and 35% respectively.2 Two-thirds of the African population and half of the total population live below the poverty datum line according to the Foundation for Research Development, while in the rural areas the number of the African population living below the poverty datum line rises to four-fifths.3 Although the ten homelands account for only 14% of the total land area, 44% of the total population live here and population density is 101 per square kilometre compared with the country average of 32 per square kilometre. Life expectancy at birth is 58 years for blacks and 70 years for whites. Inequality was built into the system through unequal expenditure on health, education and all social services; expropriation of black rights to use and benefit from the natural resource base of the country and discrimination against any free and full black participation in the modernising economy, either as entrepreneurs with access to credit and services, or as skilled workers competing on a par with white colleagues. Segregation was institutionalised and was reinforced by negative discrimination across the board against the non-white population. Improving the livelihoods of the poorest means finding ways for people to Barry Munslow is a Reader in the School of Politics and Communication Studies, University of Liverpool. Patrick Fitzgerald is the Director of the Graduate School of Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand.

Die toekoms van die sosiale wetenskappe in die nuwe Suid-Afrika

The development of the social sciences has been closely linked to increasing cultural contact and the emergence of social problems in society. The question of the applicability of the body of knowledge in the social sciences for the improvement of conditions in society was raised particularly after the Industrial Revolution when social conditions began to change drastically and social problems increasingly made their appearance. This alignment with applicability finally resulted in the development of the so called helping professions and the acceptance in formal organisations of the status of professional social scientists. The relevance of the social sciences will increase in the New South Africa. This statement is based on the fact that a successful future political dispensation will not automatically mean that all social problems will immediately disappear. In fact, the prognosis - based on trends in the past as well as the present is that there will be an escalation of social problems such as urbanization and the growth of squatter camps, breakdown of schools and the disintegration of the family. Social scientists will have to play an important role in handling these problems. It would therefore be extremely shortsighted if universities should fail to provide a thorough training for social scientists

Chambers world gazetteer: an A-Z of geographical information

This international directory of world place names contains 2000 entries with detailed statistical information on location, pronunciation, topography, history, economic activity and key dates. This is the first revised edition published since 1965 and it takes full account of sites which have appeared on the scene of world events such as Chernobyl, Palestinian refugee camps, South African squatter camps and Kurdish Turkey. Dr David Munro and his team compiled an enormous database drawn from worldwide contacts to ensure the most up-to-date reference book. It should prove essential to school and college students, teachers and lecturers, journalists, import and export businesses, government departments, public, private and educational reference libraries.

Peri‐urban malnutrition in bangladesh: Differential energy, protein, and growth status of children

A sample of 292 children 12 to 59 months of age in two large squatter camps near Dhaka underwent nutritional assessment during July and August 1979. Anthropometric measurements included weight, height, left mid‐upper arm circumference, and skinfolds at four sites (triceps, biceps, subscapular, and supra‐iliac). Derived upper arm indicators included muscle and fat areas as estimators of body composition. Findings were compared with previous anthropometric survey data from rural Bangladesh and with normative data from the United States. Twenty‐three percent of camp children were moderately to severely wasted (<80 % WH) and 34 % were severely stunted (<85 % HA). Wasted children of both sexes were of similar body composition though above 90 % WH girls were significantly fatter than boys. This relatively fatter body composition appeared greater than expected for normal sexual dimorphism, but it was not associated with any statural advantage for girls. For both sexes, stature was more strongly associated with m...

Birds in the cornfield: squatter movements in Johannesburg, 1944–1947

The Government is beaten, because even the Government of England could not stop the people from squatting. The Government was like a man who has a cornfield which is invaded by birds. He chases the birds from one part of the field and they alight in another part of the field . . . We squatters are the birds. The Government sends its policemen to chase us away and we move off and occupy another spot. We shall see whether it is the farmer or the birds who get tired first.... (Oriel Monongoaha, squatter leader.)' During the second half of the forties, between 63,000 and 92,500 Africans settled in squatter camps in and around Johannesburg.2 The camps were mostly situated beyond the city's south-western borders, in the area which later became Soweto, but there were also camps at Alexandra, ten miles to the north, and at least one within a few miles of the city's centre and one at Alberton, six miles south-east of Johannesburg. The largest of these densely concentrated settlements accounted for anything up to 20,000 inhabitants who occupied dwellings of hessian-sacking, wood, corrugated iron and cardboard. The settlements which will be discussed here were organized into movements led by individual leaders and committees. One such leader,