Table Of ContentL iving Politics in South Africa’s
Urban Shacklands
L iving Politics
in South Africa’s
Urban Shacklands
ker ry ryan c hanc e
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
T he University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2018 by The University of Chicago
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Published 2018
Printed in the United States of America
27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 1 2 3 4 5
isbn-1 3: 978-0 -2 26-5 1952-4 (cloth)
isbn-1 3: 978-0 -2 26-5 1966-1 (paper)
isbn-1 3: 978-0 -2 26-5 1983-8 (e-b ook)
doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226519838.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Chance, Kerry Ryan, author.
Title: Living politics in South Africa’s urban shacklands / Kerry Ryan Chance.
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2018. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: lccn 2017039629 | isbn 9780226519524 (cloth : alk. paper) |
isbn 9780226519661 (pbk. : alk. paper) | isbn 9780226519838 (e-book)
Subjects: lcsh: Urban poor—Political activity—South Africa. | Squatters—
Political activity—South Africa. | Political activists—South Africa. | Abahlali
B aseM jondolo (Organization) | Environmental degradation—Political aspects—
South Africa. | Squatter settlements—South Africa. | Community organization—
South Africa. | South Africa—Politics and government—1994 –
Classifi cation: lcc hv4162.a5 c43 2018 | ddc 322.40968 —dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017039629
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1 992
(Permanence of Paper).
C ontents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xiii
Introduction: Elements of Living Politics 1
Fire / Umlilo
1 “Where There Is Fire, There Is Politics”:
The Material Life of Governance 25
Water / Amanzi
2 Debts of Liberal State Transition: Liquid Belonging
and Consumer Citizenship 43
Air / Umoya
3 Coughing Out the City: Everyday
Healing in the Toxic Borderlands 63
Land / Umhlaba
4 Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust: How Territorial
Informality Builds Future Cities 85
Modular Elements
5 “The Anger of the Poor Can Go in Many Directions”:
Rematerializing Identity and Difference 107
vi c o n t e n t s
Conclusion: Liberal Governance and
the Urban Poor Revisited 133
Notes 147
References 165
Index 179
Preface
I recall driving past the building site for a gated community nestled between
the mountains and the wealthy, largely white South African suburb of Som-
erset West. In the early 2000s, billboards, advertisements, and news reports
lauded this and similar projects as the innovative answer to safe, luxury hous-
ing in Cape Town. I had visited the same site two years earlier, while assisting a
local anthropologist, and got a glimpse of what lay beneath the clean s uburban
landscape. At the time, the site was a fi fteen-y ear-o ld shack s ettlement. When
we visited, the community was in the process of tearing down their homes.
Families ripped out the nails that held together scrap metal roofs, shucked off
the wood that formed interior walls, and threw what could be burned into a
rising fi re. The new owner of the land, after a protracted legal battle with the
settlement’s residents, had issued an ultimatum reminiscent of old apartheid
days: clear the way for the gated community or be forcibly removed.
I spent time with an outspoken community leader, a woman who told
me that, despite the well-m eaning efforts of some state agents, development
experts, and lawyers, outsiders could not understand what was happening
to her community beyond the brute fact of relocation. Only by virtue of liv-
ing there and knowing the people and their history could anyone begin to
understand what they were undertaking. “She’s a trustworthy neighbor,” the
woman said of the anthropologist, “She listens to our troubles when no one
else will.” A cting as a “trustworthy neighbor,” indeed, as an a nthropologist,
showed me the possibility latent within this complicated form of listening. In
my own research, I sought to train my ear, in a sense: my time in South Africa
had already taught me that what we hear is shaped by our time and place in
the world.
I began living in South Africa in June 2001, seven years after the fall of
viii p r e f a c e
apartheid. It was still the honeymoon period of the new democracy. At that
time, the euphoric optimism about either a revolutionary redistributive state
or the “rainbow” nation—b uilt on an ostensible reconciliation between
white minority rulers and black liberation movements— had only started to
wane. In the early 2000s, I spoke with workers who said unions were being
rendered toothless by the power-s haring alliance with the ruling African Na-
tional Congress (ANC). Yet they said they would vote for their ruling party
until they died. Residents of council housing in race-b ased townships told
me that their water was being disconnected amid aggressive cost-r ecovery ex-
periments instituted under ideological pressure from the World Bank. Even
so, they questioned the value of supporting comparatively weak opposition
parties, doubting that their votes at the ballot box could serve as a protest
against international institutions half a world away.
HIV- positive activists I knew viewed government inaction in the face of
a mounting death toll as signaling a necessary return to civil disobedience.
However, nearly all had faith that they could sway recalcitrant politicians and
even multinational corporations to make antiretroviral medicine accessible
to the poorest of the poor. Shack dwellers, who had spent their lives on a
parcel of land in the city or who had moved from rural areas after the fall of
apartheid, found themselves under threat of eviction and counted among the
unemployed. Against the odds, they assured me that the promise of land re-
distribution and basic income would be fulfi lled in their children’s lifetimes,
if not their own. Migrants and refugees who had been burned out of their
homes and shops by neighbors told me that they were despondent about get-
ting papers to stay in the country legally, but they continued to view South
Africa as the continent’s inclusive promised land.
From these multiple vantages in the early 2000s, optimism—r evolution-
ary, liberal, or otherwise— was giving way to the imperfect processes that
would consolidate South Africa as an actually existing democracy. In this
book, I focus on what residents of shack settlements call “living politics” be-
cause it captures some of the complexities and contradictions of these pro-
cesses. Living politics expresses how residents make their lives viable and se-
cure and grapple with new global forces alongside the legacies of apartheid.
Ultimately, living politics is about using everyday materials—fi re, water, air,
and land—t o transform what it means to belong as a citizen. My aim in this
book, if imperfectly accomplished, is to take advantage of what I feel anthro-
pology, at its core, offers us—n amely, an approach to understanding the lives
and struggles of people who are commonly talked about but rarely listened
to, on the African continent and elsewhere in the Global South. This book
represents what residents in townships and shack settlements have taught me.
Acknowledgments
The research for this book was conducted in South Africa between 2005 and
2015. The project was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the So-
cial Science Research Council, the Wenner-G ren Foundation, the Fulbright
Foundation, the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, the Amer-
ican Council of Learned Societies, the Marcus Garvey Memorial Founda-
tion, and the American Philosophical Society. Along with receiving research
support from Louisiana State University, I am grateful for the encourage-
ment of my colleagues, in particular Joyce Marie Jackson, Micha Rahder, and
Sunny Yang.
Thanks are due to colleagues at Harvard University, where I was fellow
in the Department of Anthropology and at the Hutchins Center for African
and African American Research. I owe thanks to Ajantha Subramanian and
Vincent Brown, as well as Michael Herzfeld, for their mentorship and com-
ments on manuscript chapters. The project benefi ted from conversations
with Emmanuel K. Akyeampong, Robin Bernstein, Lawrence D. Bobo, Neil
Brenner, Glenda Carpio, Steven Caton, Caroline Elkins, Arthur Kleinman,
Achille Mbembe, Sally Falk Moore, Marcyliena Morgan, John M. Mugane,
and William Julius Wilson. I am grateful to friends in Cambridge who pro-
vided critical insights and support: Aziza Ahmed, Hiba Bau- Akar, Naor H.
Ben-Y ehoyada, Anya Bernstein, Alex Blomendal, Matthew Desmond, Na-
mita Dharia, Nicholas Harkness, Jason Jackson, Peniel Joseph, Anush Kapa-
dia, Sohini Kar, Ju Yon Kim, Julie Kleinman, Doreen Lee, Keerthi Mada-
pusi, Emily Madapusi Pera, Laurie McIntosh, George Mieu, Laurence Ralph,
Rebecca Richmond-C ohen, Emily Riehl, Jeremy Schmidt, Brandon Terry,
Anand Vaidya, and Dilan Yildirim.
I am especially grateful to Henry Louis Gates Jr., whose generous sup
