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Reviews / Comptes Rendus
| Ashwin Desai, We are the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa (New York: Monthly Review Press 2002)
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| DRAWING EXTENSIVELY on his own experiences as a community activist in the greater Durban region of South Africa, Ashwin Desai provides an overview of changes in popular protest politics in South Africa in the post-apartheid era. Central to his book is the concept of the "poors," an inclusive category encompassing those deemed surplus to the needs of contemporary capitalism, other than as a revenue source in return for the provision of basic water, electricity, and related services. |
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Chapter one deals with attempts by the African National Congress to mobilize support within the historically Indian area of Chatsworth, Durban in 1999, five years after its accession to power and rapid conversion to neo-liberal, macro-economic policies. In the end, a senior community leader with close ties to the ANC leadership was forced to question the new government's insistence that the poor should pay for basic municipal services. Centring on the story of one family, the Judhoos, chapter two provides a harrowing description of the foundation of Chatsworth during the early years of apartheid. Not only was the township filled with those evicted from their homes in inner Durban, but the land itself was taken from Indian small farmers who were themselves evicted. |
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Chapter three traces the development of Chatsworth from the 1950s to the 1990s; again, it centres on the story of a family, the Anamuthoos. Again, it is a story of the relentless destruction of livelihoods, through escalating municipal rents and arbitrary forced removals. Ironically, in the post-apartheid years, the dropping of protective tariffs devastated the textile industry, unleashing a new wave of misfortune. Chapter 4 explores the social consequences of forced removals, exploring the escalation of lawlessness in the 1980s. The latter represented not only a product of the breakdown of family ties, but also the increasing complicity of the police in crime. By the 1980s, the bulk of policing resources were concentrated towards curbing mass resistance to apartheid, leading to a large proportion of criminal activity being ignored. Moreover, the involvement of sections of the police in "dirty tricks" — death squads, and fraud, torture, and petty vandalism aimed against political activists — led to increasing numbers of policemen developing ties with the criminal underworld. Epitomized by the Chatsworth Police Station's notorious Unit 5, sections of the police soon became linked to large scale armed robberies, vehicle theft rings, the drug trade, and the like. |
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Political resistance to apartheid from within Chatsworth resulted not only in the revival of the largely middle-class Natal Indian Congress, which played a prominent role in the formation of the United Democratic Front, but also the formation and rapid expansion of grassroots civic organizations. After exploring these developments, Chapter five concludes that democratization in 1994 did not deter the local authority from abandoning its policy of seemingly arbitrary evictions of those behind on service charges, even in cases of severe poverty. Chapter six explores the new wave of popular resistance to evictions, and chapter seven critiques attempts to "solve" the problem through the classically Thatcherist method of selling off sub-economic housing. The following chapter returns to the theme of evictions, again by tracing the stories of a few of those targeted. A ray of light against a depressing chronicle of arbitrariness and police brutality was a rare legal victory proving that the relevant local authority had not always followed due processes. Chapters eight and nine deal with the further fracturing of family and community ties in the 1990s, in the face of increasing impoverishment, and chapter ten with the human cost of ongoing factory closures by firms squeezed by heightened global competition. The following discusses a protracted legal battle surrounding municipal efforts to disconnect the water supplies of account defaulters. A legal victory led the council to ruthlessly press on with its policy of disconnections, the chief official responsible being the Orwellian-named Stalin Joseph. Chapter twelve discusses the 2000 municipal elections, which, for the first time, led to an independent candidate, expressly representing the poors, being elected. The following two chapters explore community struggles against rents, service charges, and evictions elsewhere in the country — in the Mpumulanga district of Natal (not to be confused with the province of the same name), Soweto, and Tafelsig in Cape Town. |
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Probably of most interest to the readers of Labour/Le Travail, Chapter fifteen looks at the 2000 Volkswagen and 2001 Engen strikes. The former strike, at the motor firm's massive Uitenhage plant, pitted a section of the workforce against the national government, management, and the union, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa. The strike underscored the importance of linking community with workplace. Denied the full backing of the former, the ultimately dismissed strikers were forced to turn to the courts for what proved a protracted and bitter case. In contrast, the Engen strike, headed by a tiny breakaway union, resulted in a relatively favourable settlement. The author ascribes this to the strong community support the union received. However, a less charitable explanation was that, quite simply the stakes were lower. Unlike Volkswagen, Engen is a locally owned petrochemical firm, not an international conglomerate that must be appeased. The following chapter deals with the formation of a new umbrella civic forum, the Concerned Citizens Forum (CCF), covering a number of urban areas in Natal. Chapter seventeen deals with the mobilization for the protests that took place at the World Congress Against Racism, held in Durban in 2001. The final chapter explores the possibilities for developing community activism as the basis for a new mass movement against neo-liberalism, a chapter that is regrettably rather brief. |
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Desai's work is a passionate and searing account of an age where just staying alive is a privilege that has to be paid for. As international financial organizations and the WTO relentlessly press for the marketization of basic social services, the active redistribution of resources from the poor to the rich that has characterised much of neo-liberal policy for the past two decades becomes increasingly flagrant. Desai depicts the fate and responses of communities at the receiving side of such unrestrained marketization. This is both a major strength and a weakness. His account of the creativity and richness of community counter-attacks is deeply inspiring in an age when formal politics have become moribund and meaningless. However, it does make for a certain lack of strategic vision. Too often, the resultant contestations have been isolated affairs with alliances across communities and regions being fragile and constantly open to co-optation by elites. Whilst they could represent a new focoism, epitomizing hit-and-run attacks that debilitate the status quo and excite communities for the next struggle, it can also make for factionalism and fragmentation. Are we seeing the start of a renewed challenge working towards a more equitable future, or desperate and isolated responses by communities under constant assault? In other words, are we seeing the emergence of a new politics based around community activism, or a kind of "anti-politics" driven purely by reaction? These questions are particularly important given possible state responses. Resistance to the imposition of neo-liberal style governance can result in the adoption of more inclusivist social policies or the state simply abandoning communities to their own fates. Arguably, the latter has already taken place in central Johannesburg and immediately adjoining residential areas such as Hillbrow. The closing two chapters of the book do highlight the importance of mounting joint challenges uniting communities, aimed directly towards the commanding heights, yet it is still too soon to say whether the emergent social alliances are sustainable. Attacks on the status quo need to go beyond making the existing order ungovernable. The real challenge is to force viable policy alternatives firmly onto the agenda. |
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Geoffrey Wood
Middlesex University, London |
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