patel cities without citizens

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3.

CITIES WITHOUT CITIZENS

A Perspective on the Strug gle of Abahlali baseMjondolo,the Durban Shackdweller Movement*

Raj Patel

Abahlali baseMjondolo problematizes ownership as means of productionand self-improvement in the development narrative by investing it with theright to a place in the cityas a question of social reproduction and culturalentitlement (given the particular history of race and class in post-apartheidSouth Africa). In contesting betrayal of their urban land claims, in an electoralcontext, this movement brings a new sensibility into the public discourseof rights and responsibilities, challenging its members impoverishment anddemobilization as citizens of the anti-apartheid struggle.

While class struggle constitutes the motive orce in history, it is not always clear and

pure as class struggle and may take varied orms under diferent concrete situations.

In non-revolutionary situations much o the class struggle is latent and even uniden-

tiable as such at any particular moment. o talk about class struggle at such times is

really to register the act o class struggle ex-post facto. Te development o classes and

class struggle can only be talked about tendentially in terms o historical trends. In

act, classes hardly become ullyclass conscious except in situations o intense politi-

cal struggle. Class consciousness does not ully dawn upon individuals until they are

locked in political battles. It is not surprising to nd bourgeois critics o Marx always

pointing to the proletariats lack o class consciousness as an incontrovertible proo o

the alsity o the theorythe conclusion is derived rom a wrong premise through a

wrong method (Shivji, 1975, p. 8).

Introduction

One o the oddest moments o my work in South Arica involved a visit by a distin-

guished American proessor. A sel-styled Marxist poet, he visited Durban in the early2000s, graduate students in tow, to check out the struggle. I dont recall i he had a

ponytail, but I imagine he did. A couple o us at the University o KwaZulu-Natal took

him to some o the poorest settlements in the city, in which the ailures o the Arican

National Congress (ANC), to redistribute wealth and power aer the end o apartheid

had led to misery and, in some cases, rebellion. Aer hearing rom some o the activ-

ists on the ground, hearing o the ways in which the ANC had become an impediment

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34 Raj Patel

to the very goals it once espoused, the disappointed poet shook his head and said,

Yeah, you know, this is hard. Im not really sure people in America are ready to hear

this. And, to those o us in the room who discussed it aerward, what it really seemed

he meant was Im not ready to hear about this.Te myth o the ANC, particularly to activists and academics in the Global

North who celebrated the release o Nelson Mandela in 1990 and the end o apart-

heid in 1994, was deeply cherished. From aar, the anti-apartheid struggle ofered an

example o progressive change at a time when the orces o market capitalism seemed

ascendantFrancis Fukuyamas End of History was published in 1992 in the middle o

negotiations over the end o apartheid. South Arica was, in the imagination o over-

seas activists at least, a place o cherished exception, where some sliver o progressive

heaven might still all to earth.

Tose closer to the action had a diferent story. Te transormation o the ANC

into a party that advanced middle-class interests over those o the majority o the peo-

ple could be read early on. Steve Biko anticipated it. In a 1972 interview, he argued:

Tis is one country where it would be possible to create a capitalist black society, i whites

were intelligent, i the nationalists were intell igent. And that capitalist black society, black

middle class would be very efective. South Arica could succeed in putting across to the

world a pretty convincing, integrated picture, with sti ll 70 percent o the population being

underdogs (Mngxitama, Alexander, and Gibson, 2008),

Mandela himsel, soon aer his release, spoke o a program o nationalization, but

aer being given the party line, it was a program that he was never to mention again,

even as he became President in 1994. Instead, the ANC rapidly launched into a pro-

gram o neo-liberal economic development that was soon to earn it plaudits rom the

World Bank, even as its level o human development tumbled rom 58th in 1995 in theUnited Nations Development Programs rankings to 121st in 2005. As the economy

grew, and a ew became very rich indeed, wealth was not shared equally, and the poor

sufered.

It is possible to tell the story o the ANCs transormation into an elite party cater-

ing to the needs o the rich as a story about the structural necessities o the state being

a committee or the elite, as Karl Marx argued (Marx & Bender, 1988). It would also

be possible to tell the ANCs capture as the inevitable aermath o the struggle or

national liberation, as Franz Fanon predicted (1965). Teres nothing inevitable about

this process, though. Although the Tird World state appears lost to the poor, it is

never totally so, and it can certainly never appear to be an impregnable bastion o elite

interests. Te state needs legitimacy in order to govern and thereore needs to appear

to be something that it is not. Te way that modern states lay claim to legitimacy is

through the practices and language o democracy.

In a sense, all social movement studies are examinations o struggles over democ-

racy, because while democracy can be a tool o hegemony, the struggle or it is a dem-

onstration that hegemony is always incomplete, and always a process. Tis explains

why even modern democracies have social movements within them, making claims



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Cities without Citizens 35

against the state or the right to politics (Rancire, 1998). In this chapter, I examine the

ght or democracy by analyzing democracys most conspicuous spectaclethe elec-

tion. By examining the politics o elections (as distinct rom electoral politics) I show

how the ANC has become an organization with middle-class interests not throughan elite history, but through ethnographic analysis o those betrayed by the party.

Te transormation o the state into a committee or the elite is never a generalized

and theoretical exerciseit involves specic places and struggles, with ghts over the

meanings o citizenship, nation, state, and place.

Te American academic was not the only person unprepared to hear this. Te

ANC itsel has proved resistant to hearing the truth o its betrayal. Foucaults thoughts

on the relation o power and knowledge are important guides here. Foucault argues

that:

Tere is a battle or truth, or at least around truthit being understood once again that

by truth I do not mean the ensemble o truths which are to be discovered and accepted,

but rather the ensemble o rules according to which the true and the alse are separated

and specic efects o power attached to the true, it being understood also that its not a

matter o a battle on behal o the truth, but o a battle about the status o truth and the

economic and polit ical role it plays (1980, p. 132).

ruth, then, is itsel the subject o contest. Knowledge production (by powers

that be or their subjects) aims to congure truth in such a way as to address and (re)

shape power relations.1 Te meaning o terms matters, or meaning is both an object

o struggle, and the means to secure urther victories. I consensus can be created

through the limitation o the ambit o a question within certain parameters, a strug-

gle is won beore it is explicitly ought. Tis, perhaps, explains the reluctance o the

American academic to accept the truth o the poor o the shack communities o Dur-ban, clinging instead to his dated but dearly held notions o what the ANC was real ly

about. Te esteem in which he held the party was something the ANC was desperate

to inculcate in its poorest citizens, but which it had done much, through its actions, to

crush. o understand why the poorest people should break with a political party that

seemingly held its interests dear, we need specics.

Living Land Questions in Durbans Clare Estate

Exhibit 3.1 is a map o the Clare Estate area in Durban. In the center o it is the Bisasar

Road2 dump. Te dump was located there by the apartheid-era Durban municipality

at the beginning o the 1980s, in the middle o a residential area scheduled as Indian

by the apartheid Group Areas Act.3 Aer apartheid ended, the lie o the dump wasextended by the ANC-controlled municipality, despite objections rom residents.

Tose objections pointed to the range o toxins and e uent that have been illegally

dumped there, and that have poisoned the adjacent neighbourhood (Bond and Dada,

2005).

At its northeast rim, we see the Kennedy Road shack settlement, which has been

there or over two decades. It was initially a small group o shacks, but it grew at



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36 Raj Patel

the end o apartheid, with the rescinding in the 1980s o the Inux Control Laws. 4

Aricans rom rural areas who had previously been prohibited rom entering Dur-

ban were now ree to look or work in the city, though they were invariably too poor

to access ormal housing. oday, the population o the settlement stands at between

six and seven thousand people, who have access to six water pipes and rudimentary

sanitation.Tree actors together meant that the state ound it convenient to allow poor peo-

ple to live in shacks around the edge o the rubbish dump in Kennedy Road: the unde-

sirability o the land at the edge o a major solid waste acility; the need or low-cost/

low-skill workers in the city; and the municipalitys unwillingness to prioritize ormal

housing or Aricans who were using their newound reedom o movement to search

or work. Tese general eatures o town planning, noted in Te Economist (2007),

were augmented by a urther political consideration: the residents in ormal housing

in the electoral ward around Clare Estate were not historically members or supporters

o the ANC, while shackdwellers strongly supported the ruling party.

Durbans 1999 poll results point to the strong presence o the Democratic Alli-

ance, a party to the right o the ANC, with a constituency disproportionately white,coloured, Indian and middle class.5 Within Durban, the ANCa party that had ought

the struggle against apartheid under the banner o standing up or the rights o the

poorared considerably better in areas o the city with large shack settlements.6 Tis

is not a particularly South Arican phenomenonpoor people are used as vote banks

throughout the world (Fernandes and Heller, 2006). Te migration to these middle

class areas o large numbers o Aricans, who were organized in situ to support the

Exhibit 3.1 No Land, No Hope.



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ANC, secured consistently higher returns at the polls or the ruling party. Tis trend

might have continued, with the ANC building its hegemony, with the Democratic

Alliance struggling to maintain a al ling electoral presence, and with shackdwellers as

the aithul and local sirens o the ANCs national majority. But it was not to be.7Te positioning o the Bisasar Road dump had always been subject to objection

and resistance rom local residents (Bond and Dada, 2005), with recurrent action and

activism around land in the area.8 Among the recent opponents o land use and distri-

bution was Sajida Khan, who had long ought or the closure o the Bisasar Road dump.

She had led a group o concerned citizens and activists to reject the continued and

illegal dumping o toxic waste near her home. She had also conducted an impromptu

survey that ound a belt o cancers near the dump, which could be traced to the

dumps practice o burning solid waste, and the resultant production o carcinogenic

compounds.9

Khans ongoing activism ocused on the cessation o polluting activities at the

dump, the reimbursement o afected landowners at a air market value rate, and therelocation o shackdwellers to other housing concomitant with the governments own

housing plans.10 Under these plans, shackdwellers rom Kennedy Road were slated to

be relocated rom there to Verulam, a town a ew dozen kilometers away rom Clare

Estate, which was widely perceived to lack adequate housing acilities, education, or

healthcare. Most o all, the housing was ar rom the jobs and economic possibilities

that had brought shackdwellers to Kennedy Road in the rst place.

Te view that the shackdwellers are dupes, ooled by the municipal authorities

into believing that work and other benets will be made available to them rom the

dump, and that shackdwellers are pawns in a bigger game o which they are unaware,

is one shared both by Khan and by a range o other commentators (Bond and Dada,

2005). It may be the case that shackdwellers are manipulatedas a population in vote

banks, they have indeed been used by the ANC. But, and this is a crucial distinction,

in the process o this manipulation, shackdwellers were not impassive or oolish or

even irrational. Te ANC did, aer all, bring social spending directed specically at

poor black people, through child grants and pensions. Te ANC ofered material and

ideological goods that were important in the impoverished and multi-ethnic shack

settlements, and were understood as such. And, more to the point, while Khan and

other residents with ormal housing and water are happy to consign shackdwellers to

distant areas, shackdwellers themselves were, together, orming their own sophisti-

cated views regarding both the opinions held about them across the class divide, and

o the ANC itsel.

In the words o Mnikelo Ndabankulu, a shackdweller rom nearby Foreman

Road:

(Mayor Obed) Mlaba wants to relocate us to Verulam. Why? Because o property prices.

I thought the government slogan was Batho Pele (People First) and not property prices,

he said. He points to an empty plot o land adjacent to the settlement, Tey promised to

build us housing on that sidewe dont want to move to Verulam, we like it here in [elec-

toral] ward 25 (Langanparsad, 2006).



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38 Raj Patel

Articulating the issues o land, nationhood, party, and citizenship, Ndabankulu

invokes the memories o anti-apartheid struggle, the promises it brought, the slogans

generated within it, and the disappointments in the wake o 1994. It is an analysis

that demonstrates that shackdwellers need not have been cast as hapless and ignorantdupes, and it is a reminder that some civil society analysis, while ofering progressive

politics but ignoring class, can all to orces o reaction.11 Ndabankulus words reward

urther analysis (below), but to be able to do them justice, we need yet more details,

this time about the character o shackdweller analysis and organizing. Te nal detail

in Exhibit 3.1 is an area o land less than a hectare in size. It is the land to which

Ndabankulu was pointing in the above quotation. It is known to all as the promised

land, a moniker it earned as a result o its being promised repeatedly, over the course

o a decade, to the residents o the Kennedy Road shack settlement.

Trough the promises, the land achieved a mythic status similar to the original

Promised Land, an embodiment o the post-apartheid dividend that was temporarily

in limbo, but that when disbursed to the shack residents, would bring about the end otheir poverty. It was with great hope, then, that in March 2005 residents o the shacks

welcomed the arrival o bulldozers onto the Promised Land; but they were prooundly

disillusioned when they learned that the local ANC councillor had given the land not

to the residents, but to a local brick company. Te residents organized a protest later

that weekend, burning tires on a major arterial road at the bottom o their settlement.

Te police intervened, arresting ourteen people at random, including legal minors,

and detaining them under charges o public violence (Patel and Pithouse, 2005).

Te conrontation between the state and the shackdwellers escalated. Legal pro-

tests were organized to demand both clarity and action rom the ANC representa-

tives who had previously relied on the shackdwellers as a repository o votes and good

aith.

First, a protest was launched against the incumbent Councillor, Yakoob Baig, a

career politician who had switched his allegiance rom the National Partythe archi-

tects o apartheidto the Democratic Alliance to the ANC over the course o his

career. When Councillor Baig ailed to respond to demands, shackdwellers escalated

their protests to the municipal level, demanding that Mayor Obed Mlaba, and city

manager Mike Sutclife, respond to questions and issues relating to housing. One

such protest was illegally and violently dispersed by the local Sydenham police orce.12

When the City Manager and Mayor ailed to respond, the shackdwellers approached

a higher level o government, petitioning MikeMabuyakhulu, KwaZulu-Natals Pro-

vincial Minister o Local Government Housing and raditional Afairs. A march and

rally at which a list o demands was scheduled to be handed to the Provincial Minister

was illegally banned by the municipality. Te shackdwellers obtained a high courtinjunction to proceed with their march.

Te protests took place against the year-long run-up to the 2006 Municipal Elec-

tions, which were held on March 1. Troughout the escalating process, and increas-

ingly at the marches, it became clear to the shackdwellers that their role in the states

plan was as patient recipients o development, rather than active participants in its



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conception. Despite the states rhetoric o participatory development, the kind o par-

ticipation expected reected a more authoritarian vision. Reecting on this ve years

earlier, Heller observed the trend:

Te ANCs dri toward centralized control and technocratic domination can only be

explained by the demobilization o popular sectors and the states disengagement rom

civil society (Heller, 2001, p. 158).

Many shackdwellers experienced this demobilization as symptomatic o a broader

betrayal. Te arts o citizenship, engagement, debate, and iconoclasm learned and

practiced under the anti-apartheid struggles were systematically denigrated by the

government. Instead, the state extolled the virtues o patience, and o aith in author-

ity. While some residents o ormal housing next to the dump shared with shackdwell-

ers a disdain or the state, both the state and some middle-class residents seem to have

shared a view o the poor as needing to do what they were told.

Te dialectics o betrayal and disappointment, o protest and counter-maneuver,spawned a network o social organizations. Shackdwellers in diferent settlements, at

weekly meetings, came to unite under the name o Abahlali baseMjondoloZulu

or those who stay in shacks. In response to the systematic denigration o their

knowledge about their conditions, and the requent use o knowledge in authority

against them, the shackdwellers organized into a broad social movement, some mem-

bers o the movement described it as the University o Abahlali baseMjondolo (see

Pithouse, 2006; Patel, 2007). Shackdwellers came quickly to the realization that a great

deal o their potential power lay precisely in their role as vote banks, as deliverers

o the ANCs mandate to rule on behal o a racial and poor majority. Te upcoming

election ofered a moment o political opportunity.13

No Land No House No Vote

Te slogan No Land No House No Vote is one that was circulated widely within

the shack communities (see Exhibit 3.2). Te slogan was an inspired piece o political

propaganda, orged in widespread meetings across diferent settlements (at which the

possibility o elding their own candidate was discussed and then decided against).

Te slogan linked the popular mandate with a re-articulated question o land as a

means to a place in the city. It resisted gentrication (Smith, 2002), demanding instead

a right to live, move, work, and play in Durban. It was a demand with which the ANC

was not pleased.

Te rupture between the shackdwellers and the ANC happened at the same time

that the party came under increasing attack in the media and on the streets or its

ailure to address growing inequality, and a widespread eeling that it had betrayed

the poor. Although shackdwellers in Durban had organized into South Aricas largest

social movement independent o the state,14 the discontent to which it gave voice was

being maniest nationwide. In 2005, over 6000 demonstrations, legal and illegal, were

organized in South Arica.15 In a bid to downplay these rebellions, the state reerred



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40 Raj Patel

to them as spontaneous service delivery protests (Cape Argus, 2005). In act, the

protests were rarely spontaneous, nor were they about service delivery. As any com-

munity organizer knows, it takes orever to organize a spontaneous protest. Such was

the case o the Kennedy Road protests, which were the culmination o over a decade o

promise and betrayal. Te description o spontaneous protest, however, painted the

participants in the protest as unthinking, and the governments ailure as singularly

a ailure to provide, rather than as the broader demobilization and deskilling o its

citizens in the arts o politics and citizenship. Tese rhetorical moves were augmented

by a public spat in 2004 between President Tabo Mbeki and Desmond utu, endingwith the Archbishop thanking Mbeki or telling me what you think o me. Tat I am

a liar with scant regard or the truth and a charlatan posing with his concern or the

poor, the hungry, the oppressed and the voiceless.16 Such attempts at delegitimization

were the stock in trade o the apartheid regime, and it is ironic that it was Helen Zille,

o the Democratic Alliance, the party to the right o the ANC, who observed that It

is a very poor reection on the post-apartheid government that it is using exactly the

same tactics [as under apartheid] in an attempt to silence him [utu] (South Arican

Press Association [SAPA], 2004).

Mbeki himsel was at pains to address the discontent o poor people around his

governments perormance. In mid-2005, he appealed to the public saying that We

must stop this business o people going into the street to demonstrate about lack odelivery. Tese are the things that the youth used to do in the struggle against apart-

heid (Mbeki 2005). Te logic here, just to be clear, is that with the end o apartheid

comes also the end o possibilities that the governments behavior is anything but legit-

imate, and thereore beyond reproach. Further ANC communications made it clear

that any debate was a matter internal to the party.17 It was, thereore, an extension o

the discourse o unreason that service delivery protesters were seen as criminals. 18

Exhibit 3.2 Te No Land No House No Vote Movement in Action.



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Attempts to criminalize the poor are, however, di cult to maintain when the

numbers involved become as large as those involved in the Abahlali baseMjondolo

movement (over 30,000 members today). When the o cial narrative has been unsuc-

cessul in casting the majority o shackdwellers as wolves, it has tried to portray themas sheep. Responsibility or their deviant behavior has been placed almost everywhere

but at the door o the poor themselves. Academics working with the poor have been

accused o stirring up troublea repeat o the Tird Force discourse under apartheid,

when the ANC (correctly) accused the government o omenting rebellion within

black urban areas through paramilitary and covert operations.19

Te language o a third orce in the contemporary context suggests, more than

anything else, that the poor themselves are not able to articulate their own griev-

ances, much less organize to demand them. Te third orce is necessary because the

poor are too stupid, incapable, or politically immature. In response, this language was

appropriated and turned around in a widely circulated article, by the elected head o

the Abahlali baseMjondolo, Sbu Zikode, entitled: I am the Tird Force, in whichZikode was able to ip the issue o power and representation on its head:

We need to get things clear. Tere deinitelyis a Tird Force. Te question is what is itand who is part othe Tird Force? Well, Iam Tird Force mysel. Te Tird Forceisall the pain and the sufering that the poor are subjected to every second in our lives.Te shack dwellers have many things to say about the Tird Force. It is t ime or us tospeak out and to say this is who we are, this is where we are and this how we live. Te liethat we are living makes our communities the Tird Force. Most o us are not workingand have to spend all day struggling or small money. AIDS is worse in the shack settle-ments than anywhere else. Without proper houses, water, electricity, reuse removal andtoilets all kinds o diseases breed. Te causes are clearly visible. Our bodies itch everyday because otheinsects. Iit is raining everything is wetblankets and oors. Iit ishot the mosquitoes and ies are always there. Tere is no holidayin the shacks. Whenthe evening comesit is always a challenge. Te night is supposed to be or relaxing andgetting rest. But it doesnt happen like that in the jondolos. People stay awake worryingabout their lives. You must see how big the rats are that will run across the small babiesin the night. You must see how people have to sleep under the bridges when it rainsbecause their oors are so wet. Te rain comes right inside peoples houses. Some peoplejust stand up all night (2005).

Te municipal authority met the counter-position o shackdwellers with its own

moves in the run-up to the elections. It attempted to racture the shack-based organiz-

ing with morsels o patronage, currying avor and omenting dissent with promises or

the uture. As the elections drew closer, party representatives promised key communityleaders in shack settlements that in exchange or guaranteeing ANC votes, the munici-

pality would re-house them. Te municipality also announced, prematurely it turns

out,20 that it was about to build between 15,000 and 20,000 houses or poor amilies

in a R10 billion (approximately US$1 billion) development.21 All that the municipality

asked rom the shackdwellers was a little patience, and that they rerain rom embar-

rassing the government urther by talking to the media. It was a request that was met



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42 Raj Patel

with the response that Democracy is not about us being loyal to Nkosi [traditional

lord]. Democracy is about Nkosi being loyal to the citizens o this province.22

Te political back-and-orth, between the shackdwellers, the local middle class,

the municipality, and the government each had its own dimension, each with its ownmobilization o concerns around land, and around the claims that would stabilize

ownership o that land as an uncontested act. At many protests, the South Arican

ag has been a constant eature, linking the demands o the protest directly to claims

on the nation, and the state. At the protest on March 27, 2006, the protests memoran-

dum began with the words:

We the shackdwellers o Durban, democrats and loyal citizens o the Republic o South

Arica, note that this country is rich because o the the o our land and because o our

work in the arms, mines, actories, kitchens and laundries o the rich. We cannot and will

not continue to sufer the way that we do.23

Te appeal to citizenship, and to loyalty, is also a eature o demands rom otherprotests.24 Mnikelo Ndabankulus reerence to house prices trumping people reveals

the transormation o the state in its local government orms, as a class agent. And it

is house prices, not housing, that Ndabankulu points tothe prices being the normal-

ized institution o ownership, rather than the politically charged notion o people

that are summoned by citizenship. Tis range o tensions over land might be sum-

marized in able 3.1.

It was under these conditions that the 2006 municipal elections were held, with

the shackdwellers pushing or a no land no house no vote position, with local home

owners concerned about the value o their property, and with the government taking

able 3.1 Constituencies and Concepts Mobilized Around Land in Kennedy RoadConstituency Land value Ways value might be

increased

Ownership stabilized by

claims to

Local councillor Source o patronage

(alleged)

rouble-ree disposal o

land to local business

Position as elected

o cial

Shackdweller community Means to access jobs,

healthcare, education

acilities Source o ood

(or a handul o amilies)

Security o tenure Occupation, moral claim,

political mobilization,

citizenship

Local house-dwellers Store o value Access to

jobs, healthcare,

education, acilities

Removal o shackdwellers

(perceived reduced crime

and increased house

valuation)

harm already sufered by

dump, history o

occupation o land.

Property developers Possibility o redevelopment Removal o shackdwellers Promise o blackeconomic empowerment

Municipality Sink or municipal reuse Greater public good

Party Vote bank (2000) Site o trouble-markets

remove key organizers

Heritage o anti-

apartheid struggle,

guardians o nationhood,

democracy and

development



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an increasingly and publicly hard line against the shackdwellers on whom they had

relied or a vote. Te meaning o the election was, at least as ar as the government

was concerned, a reerendum on its post-apartheid policies, and an opportunity or

citizens to participate in a process that would re-coner a mandate or its hegemony.When the ANC won, it claimed precisely this vindication. As Tabo Mbeki put it:

Once more the masses o our people have conrmed their condence in our movement as

the leading representative and repository o their hopes and aspirations. For our movement

and indeed or all democrats, the days ahead o us must and will be days o celebration.

Tere are many things that we must celebrate. We must celebrate the act that we have

urther entrenched our position as the largest political ormation in our country, reely

chosen by our people as the leading party o government in all three spheres o govern-

ment. We must celebrate the act that the masses o our people continue to support the

ANC perspective o progressive social transormation, and unreservedly acknowledge the

positive changes we have brought about since 1994.25

A closer scrutiny o the election data suggests that while the ANC may have

increased its majority, not least in Durbans electoral wards (23 and 25) in which

shackdwellers organized, something else was aoot (see able 3.2).

Te two eatures to note in the election results are, rst, a reduced turnout, and

second, more revealing, a deection away rom the Democratic Alliance greater than

the increase o the ANCs vote. Indeed, had it not been or the shiing prole o the

ANCs vote, it would have lost these two electoral wards. What happened, though, is

that the Democratic Alliance, with its right-o-center agenda which appeals, in large

part, to a middle-class constituency, saw its aithul voters draining into the ANC as

the ANC marked out its willingness to cater to a new middle class, in the name o

catering (as Mbeki ulsomely claimed) to every citizen.

It is important here to identiy the election not as a nal result, but as a urther

moment in the ongoing battle or hegemony. Te election itsel was part o the move

and counter-move, in which the understanding o terms like democracy, citizen-

ship, and nationhood inect questions o land. Mbekis claim to be acting or all is

somewhat belied by the ballot data, and by the party and police actions which spe-

cically targeted poor and badly behaved Aricans living in the city, badly behaved

because they dare to claim their rights beore the ANC is ready to deliver them, years

aer they had been promised. Trough these actions, the party and state displayed a

particular, and important, attitude to shackdwellers, and their citizenship.

Citizens Without Citizenship

Giorgio Agamben ofers an incisive analysis o citizenship. In his Beyond Human

Rights (2003), he analyzes Hannah Arendts (1943) essay We Reugees. Agamben

sees the reugee as the only thinkable gure or the people o our time and the only

category in which one may see todayat least until the process o dissolution o the

nation-state and its sovereignty has achieved ull completionthe orms and limits o

a coming political community. He justies this by reminding us that



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44 Raj Patel

able 3.2 Election Data Wards 23 and 25

Party Name

2000 2006 % change

Votes % Votes %

Ward 23

Independent 656 15.0 41 1.0 14.0

Democratic alliance 1007 23.0 639 15.6 7.4

National United Peoples Organisation 36 0.8 16 0.4 0.4

Pan Aricanist Congress o Azania 15 0.3 5 0.1 0.2

Vryheidsront Plus 1 0.0 0.0

eTekwini Ecopeace 4 0.1 11 0.3 0.2

National Democratic Convention 10 0.2 0.2

United Democratic Movement 12 0.3 0.3

Scara Civic Party 14 0.3 0.3

ruly Alliance 45 1.1 1.1

Arican Christian Democratic Party 66 1.6 1.6

Arican National Congress 2024 46.3 1992 48.5 2.3

Inkatha Freedom Party 217 5.0 386 9.4 4.4

Minority Front 416 9.5 866 21.1 11.6

otal Valid Votes 4375 100 4104 100

Registered Voters 13124 13297

% Poll 33.4 30.9 -2.5

Ward 25

Democratic alliance 2043 39.2 1194 21.9 17.3

eTekwini Ecopeace 27 0.5 28 0.5 0.0

Scara Civic Party 11 0.2 0.2

Vryheidsront Plus 12 0.2 0.2Azanian Peoples Organisation 15 0.3 0.3

National United Peoples Organisation 23 0.4 0.4

United Democratic Movement 28 0.5 0.5

Inkatha Freedom Party 266 5.1 373 6.8 1.7

Minority Front 372 7.1 484 8.9 1.7

Independent Democrat 104 1.9 1.9

Arican Christian Democratic Party 219 4.2 342 6.3 2.1

ruly Alliance 144 2.6 2.6

Arican National Congress 2292 43.9 2706 49.5 5.6

otal Valid Votes 5219 100 5464 100

Registered Voters 14314 15919% Poll 36.5 34.3 2.2



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One o the ew rules the Nazis constantly obeyed throughout the course o the nal solu-

tion was that Jews and Gypsies could be sent to extermination camps only aer having

been ully denationalized (that is, aer they had been stripped o even that second-class

citizenship to which they had been relegated aer the Nuremberg Laws). When theirrights are no longer the rights o the citizen, that is when human beings are trulysacred,

in the sense that this term used to have in the Roman law o the archaic period: doomed

to death (Agamben, 2003, p. 8).

Reugee camps can be thought o as cities without citizens. What we see in the

blossoming shackdweller population in Durban, and indeed, elsewhere on the planet

(Neuwirth, 2005), is a variation on this theme. Communities within the city whose

residents provide cheap labor or the middle classes, and who reproduce their own

labor in the city, but who can never be embraced as permanent members o that city

in the places where they currently reside, those communities are ormed o citizens

without citizenship. Te call o the shackdwellers is that they are 100 percent South

Arican. Te state is, nonetheless, unwilling to accommodate their demands, conso-nant though they might be with the letter o the constitution.

Tis points to an important diference between the resistance organized by Sajida

Khan and other middle-class residents, and that o the shackdwellers. In the case o

the ormer, citizenship rights are assumed, and their attempts to remove the dump

rom the city, and remove themselves rom the vicinity o the dump, proceed on the

basis o their assumption o citizenship. Te rights o housed amilies afected by solid

waste pollution are legible to the state, and acceptable to it. Notwithstanding the act

that the government has shown itsel unwilling to accommodate them, Khan and her

ellow residents do not live in ear o arrest. In the case o shackdwellers, whom both

Khan and the state homogenize, organizing has time and again reasserted not merely

their demands, but their right to have those demands heard. Tey have claimed equal-ity as humans, as South Aricans, as amilies. Tey have needed to do this in order

simply to claim the right to exist in the city. Te language o citizenship is one that the

state should, at least in principle, be able to hearthis is why it is claimed so orce-

ully. And it is why the state has reacted so orceully in return, particularly around the

shackdwellers reusal to vote.

Alain Badiou argues that it is worthwhile to subject voting, and democracy as it

is currently construed, to close scrutiny. In so doing, he ofers an explanation o the

states behavior:

oday the word democracy is the principal organiser o consensus. It is a word that

supposedly unites the collapse o the socialist States, the putative well-being enjoyed in

our countries and the humanitarian crusades o the West. In act, the word democracyconcerns what I shall call authoritarian opinion. It is orbidden, as it were, not to be a

democrat. More precisely, it stands to reason that humanity aspires to democracy, and

any subjectivity suspected o not being democratic is regarded as pathological. At best

it reers to a patient re-education, at worst to the right o military intervention by demo-

cratic paratroopers.



14/17

46 Raj Patel

Tus democracy necessari ly elicits the philosophers critical suspicion precisely insoar

as it alls within the realm o public opinion and consensus. Since Plato, philosophy has

stood or a rupture with opinion, and is meant to examine everything that is spontane-

ously considered as normal. I democracy names a supposedly normal state o collectiveorganisation or political will, then the philosopher demands that we examine the norm o

this normality (2005b, p. 78).

Tis, incidentally, implies a restatement o the theory developed by Andreas-

son (2003) and endorsed by Davis (2004), o virtual democracy. Andreasson cites

Joseph as dening virtual democracy as having a ormal basis in citizen rule but

with key decision-making insulated rom popular involvement and oversight. While

this is certainly the case above, the idea o virtual democracy does not explain how

the necessity o ormal citizen-based rule also expresses electoral demands or class-

oriented solutions. Te ballot becomes at once the most disposable part o democracy,

and the most vital symbol o acceptable tyranny. o put it another way, elections are

more than simply window dressing o authoritarianism. Tey are a way o conscript-ing citizens to the authoritarian project, a way o creating class-based ownership o

the rituals o democratic tyranny, and o legitimizing the exclusion o mass participa-

tion because the only opinions that matter have already been heard. And this process

happens through the resistance to it, seemingly behind peoples backs, but in their

ace at the same time. It would be hard to imagine that the ANC would have scored

quite as substantial a draw rom the Democratic Alliance had they not been so vis-

ibly and anxiously aligned in their economic policies with the interests o the middle

classes they successully drew to their side. And this would not have been made quite

so maniest had there not been a year o long and visible conrontations with Durbans

poorest residents.

Conclusion

One question, in conclusion, remains: Why, aer all this, aer the recent targeting o

members o Kennedy Road in March 2007, which has, at the time o writing, led to

ve o them going on hunger strike in jail, has the movement never straightorwardly

denounced the ANC? As de Souza notes, movement politics in which shackdwellers

can nd themselves acting as urban planners involves a suite o positions, against,

with and despite the state (de Souza, 2006). But there is yet more to this. In some

settlements, no party but the ANC is alloweda break with the party would simply

not be tolerated, and some shack residents live in ear o violence or expressing their

disappointments with the ANC. Politics are orged with the tools at hand, and shack-

dwellers themselves were, in meetings on the subject, divided on the issue o the ANC,

and the power o the president. Children wrote letters to Mbeki, rom asking or his

attention with pleas o I you dont have the power to build us houses, please give us

electricity at least, to analyses o rape, to numerous threats o withholding votes i

nothing was done to address the situation, to personal indictments o the presidents

physique: I know that you eat KFC and you have lots o money but you are so at like



15/17


a pig.26 Te ANC, however, continues to maintain a powerul historical connection

to the anti-apartheid struggle. Although many within the shacks remember that other

orces (the communists, Black Consciousness, etc.) were involved in the struggle to

be ree o white minority rule, the ANC has been successul in creating a leadershipcult. 27 It is one that is deployed subversivelythe language o the ANC, reerring

primarily to the ranks o the middle class, is that al l races are welcome. Shackdwell-

ers have tried to use the discourses o inclusivity to argue that the city should also

include them, no matter what their allegiance or ethnicityor they retain a (tactical)

allegiance to the ANC.

Another way o understanding the attachment to the ANC is, however, to under-

stand it as a delity to the principles o the anti-apartheid struggle (see Badiou, 2005a).

Badious notion o delity is this: o be aithul to an event is to move within the

situation that this event has supplemented, but thinking (although all thought is a

practice, a putting to the test) the situation according to the event (Badiou, 2001, p.

41). Te notion here is that the kinds o rupture with experience that produces mili-tants, such as the struggle or reedom rom apartheid, demands also that there be a

constant positioning (and questioning o that positioning) vis--vis the anti-apartheid

legacy as a result. Insoar as the ANC contains vestiges o the anti-apartheid event, it

commands the delity o its militants. But, as it becomes increasingly clear that the

party, rom top to bottom, has betrayed the struggle against apartheid, the struggle

or a deep kind o equality, then a delity with the ANC is misplacedsomething that

the shackdwellers are nding increasingly true o late. Tey have ound, through their

investigation into their citizenship and access to politics that they are exiled with-

out return, removed not only rom the land, but rom the possibility o citizenship

through the party, and the nation.

Land is the stage on which this is carried out, the material condition o possibil-

ity. In other words, class struggles about land are livedthrough the dialectic, material

and ideological. Precisely because it is a political experiment that has no saety net,

that rejects patronage rom the state, it is exile without return.28 Tis exile, increas-

ingly, points to a politics beyond the party. Because o the bindings o party and state,

it could even point towards a politics that bears a closer resemblance to Agambens

reugees.

Trough this exile, and through the attempt to gain attention and recognition

rom the state, shackdwellers are orging new kinds o political community, which

citizenship cannot explain, and which relate to territory and place in ways that own-

ership cannot comprehend. o understand this political community means being

ready to lose aith with the hegemony o the ANC. It means being ready to understand

that a cherished icon o liberation is trying to impose an agenda that betrays its rheto-ric. But it also involves accepting that the denitions o citizenship and nation are not

exhausted or dened by the laws o the state, or the dictates o a party. Citizenship is a

call or a politics, a call that in this case has resulted in protest against the very insti-

tutions that once promised to provide a orum or citizenship. In protesting against

the state, the members o Abahlali baseMjondolo are seizing the very citizenship that

the ANC reuses to give them. What this means is that, or many shackdwellers, the



16/17

48 Raj Patel

struggle against apartheid remains alive, with all its hopes and contradictions. And

although some American proessors nd that hard to accept, it does ofer a beacon o

hope that, while not reached in the 1990s, is itsel a sign o the Promised Land.

Notes

* Acknowledgments Tis paper was unded in part by a generous grant rom CODESRIAsMultinational Working Group on Land. It is much improved thanks to the help o the mem-bers o the Multinational Working Group, CODESRIA (with special thanks to Bruno Sonko),the University o Abahlali base Mjondolo, Richard Pithouse, Jun Borras, Dan Moshenberg,Shereen Esso, and Philip McMichael. It is dedicated to the memory o Archie Maeje andCosmos Chazmuzi Bhengu.

1. Te keenest observer o the process through which material and ideological clashes are oughtdaily, is Antonio Gramsci (Gramsci and Buttigieg, 1992). His understanding o hegemonymight be paraphrased as the permanent politics o move and counter-move, ought not merelyby classes but through subtler co-optations and blocs, reecting the conguration o orceswithin classes that aims to secure and maintain domination through a mixture o coercionand consent.

2. Coordinates or dump: 294851.76S, 305852.80E3. See Jagarnath (2006) or a denitive history o race relations in nearby Sydenham.4. As Pithouse and Butler note:

In 1923 the state sought to stem the ow o people into the cities with the policy o

Inux Control that aimed to prevent Aricans rom moving to cities, to orce those(mostly men) with permits to inhabit segregated workers quarters and those withoutpermits to leave. It stayed, in diferent versions, on the statute books until 1986 andwas replaced, in 1990-1, by a non-racial urban policy ramework designed largely bythe think-tanks o big business[2] with the Urban Foundation being the major player(2007, p. 5).s

5. Tese areas correspond to Independent Electoral Commission districts 433900xx. See www.elections.org.za or more.

6. Compare the Pemary Ridge Primary school polling station results (station 43390054), in anarea in which there are relatively low numbers o shackdwellers, and in which the ANC won 30percent o the vote to the Democratic Partys 41 percent, to those o Hillview Primary School(station 43390032), in which the ANC secured 60 percent o the vote to the Democratic Partys17 percent.

7. Richard Pithouse has detai led the story in a number o thoughtul articles, and the ollowingsummary should not be substituted or a reading o his work (Pithouse 2005, 2007). Moreinormation is available at the shackdwellers website, which I help to administer; there is anarchive o academic work about the movement at http://www.abahlali.org.

8. For more, see (Lodge, 1983) and (Maylam and Edwards, 1996) passim, especial ly on the CatoManor uprisings.

9. Te dump is, however, the source o employment or some residents o the Kennedy Roadsettlement. Other work explores this tension urther (Patel, orthcoming).

10. Which were only ully revealed to shackdwellers aer an application under the Promotion o

Access to Inormation Act. Te ull documents received, which still lack vital detai ls, are avail-able at http://www.abahlali.org/node/279

11. See the special issue oCritical Asian Studies, December 2005, or development o this point.12. See http://www.abahlali.org/node/20.13. Tis is a not terribly helpul phrase, which is used by, among others, arrow (1998). o say

that a political opportunity exists tells little about the precise dynamics, let alone dialectics,through which it becomes important.



17/17


14. Tis claim acknowledges that while movements like COSAU, the Conederation o SouthArican rade Unions, has more members, its claim to being independent o the state is null:COSAU is, with the Communist Party, a member o the ANCs tri-partite ruling alliance.

15. http://www.xi.org.za/pages/Legal%20Unit/Gatherings%20Act/aming%20the%20toyi%20

toyi.html.16. utu (2004) and http://news.bbc.co.uk /2/hi/arica/4052199.stm.17. See ANC today passim.

18. Te criminalization o poor people has recently reached new heights with a police sponsoredpublicity series , recall ing the layout o a comic strip, in which local constabulary o cials raidedshacks, recovered stolen property, hunted cop kil lers, and in which arrested suspectsbegin their long walk to reedom. http://www.sydenhamcp.org.za/SAPS/SAPSRaid20050729.pd.

19. http://www.abahlali.org/node/182.20. Again, this has been discovered by the shackdwellers only through recourse to the Promotion

o Access to Inormation Act, and the disclosures made by the government have been incom-plete and partial at best.

21. http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?ArticleId=3000079.22. http://abahlali.bayareaood.org/node/72.23. http://www.abahlali.org/node/100.24. See, e.g., memoranda or protests on September 14, 2005 and October 4, 2005 at h t t p : / /

abahlali.bayareaood.org/node/138 and http://abahlali.bayareaood.org/node/211.25. http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2006/text/at08.txt.26. http://abahlali.bayareaood.org/les/Kennedy%20Road%20brochure.pd.27. It is part o what I have elsewhere termed global ascism (Patel and McMichael, 2004).28. Pithouse (2006, p. 24) citing Hallward (2003, p. 77).

patel cities without citizens

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