Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements PDF

2 ‘The People Cannot Live in the Air’:...

2 ‘The People Cannot Live in the Air’: History of the Squatter Movement in South Africa All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Theorists of working-class self-organisation have observed that grassroots decision-making structures tend to proliferate during periods of height- ened struggle and revolution, for example the Russian soviets, Italian factory councils and Iranian shuras (workplace and neighbourhood councils).1 In South Africa, black working-class communities formed grassroots commu- nity organisations such as the township civics and street committees on a mass scale during periods of upsurge in the struggle against apartheid. In the post-apartheid era, these community structures have declined signifi- cantly in terms of their reach, operation and dynamism, presumably because of the lull in struggle. On the other hand, amakomiti, as my research indi- cates, appear to continue to thrive in the post-apartheid era. In this chapter, I look into salient aspects of the history of the squatter movement in South Africa in the mid-twentieth century and during the 1980s resurgence of opposition to apartheid in order to reflect on what form and character amakomiti take during upswings in the struggle. This will help clarify the twin roles of the amakomiti as organs of struggle and as grass- roots self-governance structures. It will also allow us to assess the argument that in addition to amakomiti existing to carry out functional duties, they also exist because of a culture or tradition that has developed around them and is presumably being passed on from generation to generation. In looking at earlier forms of grassroots organisation in South Africa’s shantytowns, it is important to locate the discussion in the context of the political economy of the country because this provides the conditions and factors that shape these areas and the life situation of the inhabitants. If we go back in history far enough, we find that migrant labour was a key feature Copyright 2021. Pluto Press. 20 EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY AN: 2750304 ; Trevor Ngwane.; Amakomiti : Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements Account: s4226877.main.ehost  History of the Squatter Movement in South Africa of the form proletarianisation and urbanisation took in South Africa. The black working class came into existence with the movement of people from peasant economies in the rural areas to the mines and factories in the cities. The shortage of housing for black workers is a key factor in the emergence of shack settlements then and now. Here, I want to approach the history of migrant labour and the movement of workers from country to town by focusing on Mpondoland (located in the Transkei bantustan during apart- heid, and today in the Eastern Cape province) because it is from this area, among others, that migrant labour was historically sourced, and indeed con- tinues to be today. More importantly, in Mpondoland we find earlier rural forms of community organisation whose legacy and features still exist in the amakomiti of Nkaneng, the shack settlement in Rustenburg where many workers from this area live. From Mpondoland, the chapter moves to the story of the squatter movement in Johannesburg in the 1940s. The focus here will be on the com- mittee system built by James Sofasonke Mpanza in the settlement he built which later became part of Soweto. The shack settlement Sofasonke Village was born of a struggle for proper housing by black workers in Johannes- burg. The chapter then leaps to a discussion of the role of shack dwellers and their movements during the 1980s, a period of upsurge in struggle, explor- ing shack self-organisation and its relationship to the broader movement of struggle, especially in the townships. This aspect of the discussion is very brief here because the case study on Duncan Village in Chapter 4 explores some of these issues in detail and in a specific context. However, I do briefly discuss shack self-organisation in Alexandra in the 1980s, a most tumultu- ous time in the history of this township. The key point from this chapter is perhaps that past struggles, strategies and historical forms of organisation have influenced to a greater or lesser extent present-day forms of struggle and organisation in the shack settlements today. iinkundla zamampondo, migrant labour and proletarianisation 2 It was early in the nineteenth century, and amaMpondo were busy herding their cattle and tending their fields when the penetration of merchant capital from its launching pad in the Cape of Good Hope rudely and irreversibly disrupted their lives. The first indigenes to feel the early winds of what was 21 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use  Amakomiti to become the hurricane of conquest, dispossession and colonialism were the Khoi and the San (the ‘Hottentots’ and the ‘Bushmen’). The former were pastoralists who had lived in the area since the fifth century, while the latter, hunters and gatherers, lived in the southern tip of Africa for millennia. Both groups had a very rough time under the settlers. The interaction between the Khoi and the white settlers was marked by violence as the latter fenced the land on which the indigenous people reared their Nguni herds. The San were hunted like animals by the newcomers and were forced to move north. The Khoi’s relatively stable and prosperous nomadic way of life was shat- tered by the arrival of the settlers.3 The new colonial order subjugated and integrated them as labourers, lovers, and later as soldiers. In 1820, about 4,000 British immigrants settled further east, on the doorstep of amaXhosa, amaMfengu, amaMpondo and other peoples living there.4 Empire sent the white settlers as reinforcements in the light of the perceived threat of the African societies ruled by kings, chiefs, clan leaders and powerful household heads, and whose mode of production we can describe as tributary.5 Behind the empire were the dynamics of merchant capitalism and its rapid transformation back home into manufacture and then industrial capitalism. The political history of class struggle in South Africa that began with the decimation of the Khoi and San way of life now found permanent definition and shape in the contradictory and tumultuous interaction, from the point of view of political economy, of the capitalist and tributary modes of production.6 Earlier forms of capitalist relations in these parts of the world were characteristically commercial and agricultural, but with the discovery of gold and diamonds, the ground was laid for the devel- opment and dominance of the capitalist mode of production proper with all its laws of motion operative within the confines of a colonial and peripheral economy. But as Mamdani has argued, the colonists could not ride in willy- nilly and take over these independent African societies, they had to fight and find other ways and means of subjugating them, they had to use force and consent, brutality and guile.7 The social, economic and political organisation of the Eastern Cape African societies was based on the homestead that was the basic and main unit of production and consumption. A cluster of homesteads could find unity and governance in the person of a chief or prominent clan leader whose rule was premised on exacting tribute from homestead heads in the form of goods and services, mainly cattle and labour service. William Bein- 22 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use  History of the Squatter Movement in South Africa art’s study of the amaMpondo of Phondoland provides us with a detailed picture of their way of life at the turn of the twentieth century.8 The chiefs or headmen, including homestead heads with large households, regularly held councils, generally known as iinkundla, in which the affairs of the home- stead, clan, community, chieftaincy or kingdom were discussed. Inkundla (singular; plural iinkundla) literally refers to an open space or ‘courtyard’ with a strong connotation of processes taking place therein being transpar- ent and occurring before the eyes of everyone.9 The appropriate patriarch and leader chaired iinkundla sessions, and this typically involved a lot of lis- tening by him and then his having the prerogative of closing the discussion with a ruling (a chairing style, psst, preferred by Nelson Mandela in more modern settings). The inkundla also had a dispute resolution function, adju- dicating between warring parties; it also acted as a court that had the powers to try and, if necessary, punish offenders, usually in the form of fines. Anthropologists suggest that in pre-colonial times, the king or chief was often compelled to be extremely responsive to the various interests and wishes of his ‘subjects’, and in fact, in many instances he would be elevated to his position by his peers.10 Also, as Mahmood Mamdani has argued, ‘in 19th century Africa … kin groups contested with and balanced the claims of state authority’.11 The colonial state interfered by giving chiefs more powers over the people, powers backed by its might, thus introducing a despotism that had in some instances not previously existed.12 Harold Wolpe seminally theorised the preservation of indigenous insti- tutions such as the chieftaincy, communal land ownership and a ‘free’ peasantry within the ‘articulation of modes of production’ paradigm.13 His ‘cheap labour power thesis’ explained the native reserves from the perspec- tive of capital: they served to reduce the cost of labour reproduction by keeping wages down. Stephen Friedman has given an incisive and compre- hensive account of the criticisms levelled against Wolpe’s theorisation, in particular by African(ist) scholars such as Mafeje, Magubane and others.14 Beinart worked within the articulation model, but his research findings led him to question amaMpondo’s loss of agency implied by this paradigm.15 He provides evidence to suggest that the pattern of labour migration in Phondoland at the turn of the nineteenth century was not simply the result of colonial state policy or the related interests of mining and/or agricultural capital. Rather, the form of labour migrancy was partly a specific response by amaMpondo to their deteriorating economic circumstances wrought 23 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use  Amakomiti by natural disasters and the encroachment of the colonial state and capi- talist relations. The chiefs were struggling to maintain their economic and political power with colonial pressures often pitting them against their own people. Nevertheless, according to Beinart, the commoners supported the chiefs, and chieftaincy as an institution, because they stood for and sup- ported communal land ownership, thus guaranteeing everyone land for living and grazing.16 Besieged by colonial conquest and capitalist relations, the Mpondo strategy was to adjust and adapt on better terms rather than escape the capitalist juggernaut. In a kind of war of position, they sought incorporation into capital’s circuits from a position of relative strength with a semblance of economic security.17 Migrancy linked to the cattle advance system illustrates this. A system of payment preferred by household heads for sons that went to work in the gold mines was cattle advance, whereby a beast was handed over by the labour tout, usually a white trader, before the migrant worker left for the mines. This ensured that the migrant contributed directly to the maintenance and growth of the domestic herds. It also ensured that the sons did not spend their money in the city. This suggests active engagement with rather than passive surrender to the power of capital. In other words, amaMpondo were neither ‘modernists’ nor ‘traditionalists’, as some dual economy analysts imagine, they were pragmatists, attempting to negotiate their way around real constraints emanating from ‘both worlds’. This analyt- ical approach recovers the migrant workers’ agency, including that of their peasant communities. As V.L. Allen has pointed out, mineworkers shape their own history despite the odds being heavily stacked against them in the mines.18 The migration of iinkundla characteristics into amakomiti formed by Mpondo miners in Rustenburg illustrates this. the squatter movement in the 1940s We can see traces of the organisational forms of the 1940s squatters’ movement in amakomiti of today. This movement took over land, establish- ing ‘squatter camps’ despite strong opposition from the white state because, as one ANC minister put it much later, ‘the people cannot live in the air’.19 In Cape Town, for example, the squatter camps established in the 1940s and 1950s met the fate of many others in other parts of the country: demoli- tion and the herding of the people into black townships and bantustans by 24 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use  History of the Squatter Movement in South Africa the apartheid government that came to power in 1948.20 However, further influx into the urban areas followed in the late 1960s due to economic expansion, which at first was tolerated by the state, and then followed by another spate of demolitions with the recession; in Cape Town, the affected settlements were Modderdam, Unibel and Werkgenot.21 Crossroads, which later became the site of major struggles, was established as a transit camp in 1975 in the course of these demolitions and forced removals.22 Umkhum- bane (Cato Manor), the largest shack settlement in Durban, noted for its vibrant cultural and political life, was demolished in the early 1960s after protracted struggle.23 In this section, I will focus mainly on the Sofasonke movement in Soweto, Johannesburg, as a case study of internal camp processes related to commit- tee organisation, without completely neglecting the development of similar movements in other urban centres of South Africa. The movement at its height in the second half of the 1940s involved ‘between 63,000 and 92,500 Africans [who] settled in squatter camps in and around Johannesburg’.24 It commanded the attention of the state, oppositional political organisations and ordinary workers; the United Party government drove it back, and the apartheid ‘hard men’ finally routed it when they took power in 1948. It nev- ertheless achieved its goal of forcing the state to build houses for the black working class, albeit on the cheap. It was an inspiration for the mass resist- ance to racial and class domination that coalesced and began to challenge ‘racial capitalism’ in the 1950s. As Martin Legassick observes: ‘This was a decade of organisation and struggle – of mass demonstrations, boycotts, defiance, strikes and near-uprisings – against poverty wages, the pass laws, price and fare rises, Bantu Education, “Bantu Authorities”, “cattle-culling”, police repression, and all the other burdens.’25 The focus of the squatter movement was ‘houses for all’, its epicenter was Orlando township,26 and its undisputed leader was James Sofasonke Mpanza, the founder of the Sofasonke Party.27 The movement was born on Saturday 25 March 1944, when Mpanza exhorted hundreds of Orlando sub-tenants and other poorly housed workers to follow him and cross the River Jordan, set up a camp of improvised shelters on an open veld across a small stream next to the township, and thereby defy the state.28 This audacious act caught everyone by surprise, in particular the Labour Party- controlled Johannesburg City Council, and thus was born Shantytown, or Sofasonke Village.29 Baruch Hirson notes: ‘Several men emerged in 1944–45 25 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use  Amakomiti as shantytown leaders, but it was James Sofasonke Mpanza who initiated, inspired, and planned the greatest shantytown of all.’30 From Shantytown, the movement spread to various parts of Johan- nesburg, including Pimville, Alexandra, Sharpeville, Albertynsville and Zuurbekom.31 Everywhere, the modus operandi was the same: organise a group of people in need of houses, identify a piece of land, erect shelters, and demand that the state builds houses or else the camp stays put.32 In a few instances, the squatters occupied half-completed council-built houses en masse.33 Mpanza’s leadership and focus seem to have centred on his constit- uency in Orlando, and he inspired rather than led the broader movement.34 He was an outspoken, charismatic, shrewd, brave and fiercely independent political organiser and fighter who influenced and embodied the spirit of the squatter movement at its strongest moments.35 The dimensions of this spirit, I would argue, are autonomy, independence, irreverence, popular democracy, mass mobilisation, direct action and challenging the authori- ties and the system of private property they defend. Mpanza’s intervention in the politics of housing in Johannesburg, and to an extent in the politics of black opposition to white rule, was to match words and appeals to reason with mass mobilisation and action. The militancy of the ANC Youth League that saw the ANC turn to the masses and lead the defiance campaigns of the 1950s was preceded by: thousands of men, women, and children who set up their shacks on the veld, in the face of a hostile Council and government, and withstood all attempts at removing them, who had carved out the land. Mpanza, in leading these people, put himself at the head of the biggest social and political upheaval of the war years.36 The ANC and CPSA (Communist Party of South Africa) were not impressed.37 The ANC’s problem was that it did not envisage any inde- pendent action by the masses, and for the CPSA the problem was political method, whereby it found it hard to relate its theory of revolution to grass- roots dynamics.38 For the ADP (African Democratic Party), in addition to other political problems, its leaders such as ‘Paul Mosaka and Self Mampuru were committee men, not activists … their dark suits and ties marked them as strangers in the midst of hessian shacks and cardboard shelters’.39 These political parties increasingly found themselves losing the battle to ‘the short 26 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use  History of the Squatter Movement in South Africa term, rather immediate, localised and personal nature of Mpanza’s politics. Also his ability to exploit popular sentiments.’40 Lopez41 explains the ideo- logical character of ‘squatting’ by reference to the following quotation from Foucault: These are ‘immediate’ struggles for two reasons. In such struggles people criticise instances of power which are the closest to them, those which exercise their action on individuals. They do not look for the ‘chief enemy’ but for the immediate enemy. Nor do they expect to find a solution to their problem at a future date (that is, liberations, revolutions, end of class struggle).42 Hence: ‘Unconcerned about long term goals or national party programmes, Mpanza was less constrained in the means he was prepared to use to achieve his ends’, including the use of strong-arm tactics, self-promotion, and flexi- bility in tactics and allies.43 Nevertheless, primarily ‘Mpanza was able to sway his audience. He spoke their language, the language of those who hungered for houses …. He was looked upon with reverence as the man who fought for and spoke on behalf of the underdog.’44 Furthermore: It was Mpanza’s brilliance as an organiser, his deeply rooted empathy with the ordinary people, specifically the working class and his ability to trans- late this into action …. [H]is daring at placing himself at risk in a struggle for working class goals which has kept him alive in the minds of working people today … the Mpanza who organised the squatters, against the threat of the Council – the Mpanza who gave them houses, the Father of Soweto.45 The power of Mpanza and the squatter movement stemmed from self- organisation and mass action. All the land invasions or squats of the 1940s had a leadership, but the people were expected to be actively involved in the process, including erecting their shelters, paying money to the organisa- tion, braving the harsh conditions and defending the camp against attacks by the authorities. Organising an invasion and running a camp required many meetings, with the leaders consulting with and guiding the constitu- ency. Mpanza himself, although he was severely criticised for his lapses in this respect, ‘never failed in all his civic activities to obtain a mandate from 27 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use  Amakomiti the residents … he said a leader should always get a close connection with the people. He said a good leader must be a follower of the people.’46 It is thus possible to speak of a form of popular democracy that operated in the squat- ter camps. In contrast, the state offer of democracy was voting for a racially based Advisory Board system whose recommendations it largely ignored.47 Women were expressly excluded from voting, and in any case, without a husband, ‘widowed, deserted, young unmarried, or newly arrived women faced ejection from the township if discovered’, whereas ‘in the shanty­town they enjoyed a new freedom’, and as a result, ‘women were among the group’s most devoted members’.48 Segregationist and apartheid planners disliked women because they pre- ferred cheap male black labour coming into the mines and farms to work, not to set up families. The arrival of women represented the latter, and there was undisguised hostility to women, amounting to official misogyny.49 But this did not stop them coming to the towns; their frosty reception by the authorities put them at the forefront of squatter movements. Women could not access housing, and squatting was a solution to their problem. Patriar- chy and racism deemed single women undesirable to the extent that when a husband died, apartheid officials would force the widow to choose a new man through lots using men’s hats in order to secure her marital house.50 The involvement and leadership of women in the squatter movement are notable in many other areas, including the beer wars in Cato Manor in 1959 that were part of a struggle against the demolition of uMkhumbane in Durban.51 The Council and the government were mostly driven by a fear, real or exaggerated, that: ‘Whenever Natives have been allowed to develop a township without being under municipal control, the result has been dis- astrous.’52 But ‘Mpanza was maintaining order in the camp’, and special people were assigned to combat crime, enforce the camp’s laws and carry out communal duties.53 As a rule, the associations and committees running the various squatter camps took care of affairs: ‘Their leaders controlled site allocation and provided amenities, had their own “strong-arm” corps, meted out justice in courts, levied fines and floggings, and controlled entry to the camp.’54 Mpanza went further: ‘The fuel depot was being run as a co- operative store by this stage selling coal and wood at less than 20 percent of Orlando prices.’55 Entry into the camps was controlled, and traders’ vehicles paid a levy to the ‘office’ for the privilege of coming into the camp to do business.56 In most camps, ‘followers paid a weekly toll …. All monies were 28 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use  History of the Squatter Movement in South Africa in the hands of the leaders, to be used at their discretion.’57 The money was used to pay the camp workers, including the crime-fighters, and in the case of Mpanza, to also fund the various legal cases he initiated or had to defend against the state. Money also went to cleaning the camp, funding trips carried out in the name of the camp, and related expenses. Self-governance was a key aspect of the camps. ‘Municipal control over the Orlando township … is practically nil’, and the squatter leaders ‘had arrogated to themselves “all state and governmental functions in Tobruk and Alexandra camps”’.58 These were arguably seed- lings of ‘dual power’ emerging in the camps, with the committees and their leaders taking over powers normally exercised by the municipality. The aspect of ‘self-management’ might have posed the greatest threat to the government, because not only was it the fruition of a struggle against and in defiance of the state, but it also disproved the theory that ‘natives’ could do nothing by themselves and needed the paternalistic hand of the white state. In the words of the Minister of Health: ‘the squatter movement should be controlled by the authorities instead of being left to spontaneous, sporadic eruptions, or worse still, to organisation and control by unlawful elements’.59 The main concern ‘was one of control. The actual responsibility of providing housing was secondary’, as is evident in the words of the Sec- retary of the Department of Native Affairs: ‘The most pressing need of the Native community is adequate housing. Only by the provision of adequate shelter in properly planned native townships can full control over urban natives be regained.’60 This explains why the Council often viewed the action of squatters ‘as a trial of strength rather than emanating from legitimate grievances. Hence the call for force.’61 Martin Legassick has argued that the main constraint on the South African state during the era of the squatter movement and beyond had been the necessity of controlling the working class, in particular contain- ing the struggles of black workers in order to maintain the cheap labour system.62 The peculiar uneven development of the capitalist economy made the suppression of wages the key factor in maintaining profit levels, as other cost factors were beyond the control of the mine owners.63 Although the South African economy grew rapidly between 1947 and 1954, the heyday of Mpanza and the squatter movement, African living standards declined.64 It is in the city that ‘contradictions in the capitalist mode of production there- fore play themselves out most forcefully’, because cities are ‘the spatial forms 29 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use  Amakomiti that most emphatically support the production and circulation of capital’.65 From this point of view, there were real constraints on the capitalist state in South Africa adopting a liberal reformist approach to labour, and only the struggles of the workers themselves could force concessions out of capital. As a result, when the party of apartheid took power in 1948: ‘The task con- fronting the NP [National Party] government was to reinforce the cheap labour system – against a movement of the oppressed working class that had suffered defeats, but was still rising.’66 Peter Alexander, in a study of labour militancy during the war years, provides a clue to the political economy of the emergence of the squatter movement: the character of capitalist development in the 1940s had implications for urbanisation. It encouraged a massive growth in the total number of Africans who were living in the cities at any one time, whilst simultane- ously ensuring that many, if not most, such people were not settled urban dwellers.67 The state was constrained both politically and economically when it came to the provision of housing to African workers. On the one hand was the Stallard Commission: ‘The Native should only be allowed to enter into the urban areas … when he is willing to enter and minister to the needs of the White man, and should depart therefrom when he ceases so to minister.’68 This represented a desire to halt, slow down or control the process of urban- isation and proletarianisation from the point of view of racialist capital and the state – a Sisyphean task, as the case of the 3,000 squatters at Orlando West in September 1946 proved. Many came from the Pimville tanks, where they had been housed by the state ‘temporarily’ for 41 years, and more importantly, most were employed in Johannesburg; there were thus no legal grounds for the Council to tell them, as was its habit, ‘to go back to where they came from’.69 ‘Secondary industry, wanting to take advantage of a more mobile labour force, exercised considerable influence on the central govern- ment’ and contradicted the Council’s Stallardist stance.70 The squatter movement was a working-class urban movement, it involved ‘struggles in which the working class [were fighting] in establishing them- selves as a community’.71 It was a movement mostly of sub-tenants, what today are called ‘backyarders’, and other ‘houseless’ people.72 However, this 30 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use  History of the Squatter Movement in South Africa was a working class still in the making, with many people fresh from the rural areas and still struggling to find a toehold in the city and establish themselves either permanently or as migrant workers. The migration into Johannesburg is estimated to have swelled the black population by 69 per cent in the 1940s,73 and significantly, the proportion of females migrat- ing increased.74 The futile and harsh efforts of various state structures to halt or otherwise control and re-direct this exodus created a lot of hardship for workers and provoked movements of resistance such as the squatter movement. Understanding the dynamics of the social movement, its politi- cal character, the nature of leadership and its organisational forms is no easy task. As Patrick Bond notes: It is not always feasible to specify the construction of social movement identity in urban settings, where conjunctural features are legion, but where overt market processes have torn asunder land relations, rural ties, indigenous culture, and many forms of pre-existing authority and social control.75 Key concepts in mainstream social movement theory are not adequate to the task, namely political opportunity structure, resource mobilisation, framing and related aspects. The main difficulty is the tendency of these theories to overlook or underplay class contradictions in society. In his critique of Piven and Cloward’s76 theory of ‘poor people’s move- ments’, French notes the use of ‘vacuous concepts like “poor people”’, and laments the theory’s lack of a ‘materialist concept of power nor a theoret- ical commitment to historical specificity’.77 We need, instead, studies that ‘show in a more integrated way the actual playing out of the specific histor- ical forces in a specific context’.78 A promising line of inquiry is provided by approaching the squatters as workers who needed adequate shelter in the urban areas where they worked or sought work. Alexander’s research into labour militancy during the war years takes on new light when we widen our lens because it suggests that the increase in struggle at the work- place was occurring in tandem with heightened struggle in workers’ living spaces.79 Alexander provides data to show that ‘the level of strike action was far greater than officially admitted’.80 In other words, there was a general increase in working-class militancy, including in working-class residential areas, which suggests the emergence and development of a working-class 31 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use  Amakomiti movement during this period.81 This provides a broader context for under- standing the squatter movement. From the account here, the squatter movement was arguably a working- class movement that arose out of the contradictions of the capitalist process, in particular its uneven and combined development, which, in deed if not words, attacked capitalist private property, albeit mostly in the form of state land. It developed ‘unique’ alternative forms of self-organisation and politi- cal practice that would stretch the conceptual categories of social movement theory to its limits. Whereas Mpanza organised the squatters into a politi- cal party, the Sofasonke Party,82 for Castells, ‘autonomy means, basically, a neat separation of activists from institutionalised actors like political parties and unions’.83 This definition fits the manner in which contemporary South Africa’s most important movement of shack dwellers, Abahlali baseMjon- dolo, projects itself (and is understood by its analysts), but differs from Mpanza’s political practice, which was complex and multi-pronged.84 Stadler has argued that the 1940s squatter movement tended to be ‘always inward-looking’, did not develop wider support and longer-term political objectives, and did not expand its repertoire of tactics beyond land invasions and setting up camps.85 Part of developing longer-term political objectives would have included linking up with other organisations such as the ANC, ANC Youth League and South African Cultural Observatory, organisa- tions that refused to give their support to the movement.86 Stadler argues that the authorities developed a response to the tactic of land invasion and the setting up of squatter camps by providing alternative accommodation, thereby leading to the cessation of the camps and the political challenge they represented.87 These criticisms are valid. However, they partly reflect the development of a movement in the absence of support from the broader workers’ movement. With hindsight, it is apparent that available strength from the workers’ movement was left unused. Opportunities for building a formidable movement against the racist and exploitative oppressor went to waste. For example, at the time, the authorities’ hands were full dealing with the war and maintaining the wartime industry, worker combativity was on the increase in workplaces and living spaces, the petty bourgeoisie in the ANC Youth League was radicalising, and in Africa the politics of national liberation were on the rise.88 Failure to build the squatter movement to its highest level of militancy and politics was a lost opportunity from the per- spective of the workers’ movement and the struggle for national liberation.89 32 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use  History of the Squatter Movement in South Africa shack dwellers and the united democratic front in the 1980s and 1990s Shack residents played a significant role in the anti-apartheid movement, with shack settlements often the terrain upon which vicious battles and key struggles were waged that ultimately led to the demise of apartheid.90 Some writers have questioned this assessment, observing that, in fact, the poorest of the poor tended to distance themselves from the township-based height- ened political activism of the 1980s. They argue that in some instances, the distance between shack settlement and township politics was so great that it opened the door for the abuse of informal settlements as springboards to launch pro-apartheid violence against the anti-apartheid movement.91 Underlying the opposing assessments are the assumptions made about shack dwellers. This question is a complex one. This is because not only were experiences not uniform across all areas, but many settlements were themselves in the process of formation or were undergoing profound changes as a result of the apartheid state’s relaxation of influx control laws in a context of heightened struggle, widening divisions in society and generalised social turmoil. The first assertion is premised on the theoretical postulation that those with little to lose, such as shack dwellers, have a lot to gain if they involve themselves in struggle. The second assertion argues the opposite, stating that those with little tend to cling hard to it and do not want to risk the little they have, and hence distance themselves from political activism. Furthermore, the first position tends to see shack dwellers as part of the working class, while the second position emphasises the distinction between the employed and unemployed, between the formally housed working class and the informally housed ‘underclass’. I am going to consider different experiences related to this debate with reference to the United Democratic Front (UDF), an organisation born in 1983 to unite and give focus to numerous local and sectoral struggles that were the hallmark of this period of heightened opposition to and mass action against apartheid.92 Many community organisations operating in the townships and settlements were UDF affiliates or looked to it for leadership. The UDF played a major role in the final push against the apartheid system. It also facilitated the emergence of the ANC as a dominant player in the anti-apartheid opposition forces.93 The significance of the UDF lies 33 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use  Amakomiti in the appreciation of the important role played by the myriad of local organisations that were its affiliates in the struggle against the apartheid state. Township civics, street and block committees operated at the local level, including the organisation and coordination of campaigns involving millions of ordinary South Africans in the anti-apartheid struggle.94 What role did shack dwellers and their organisations play in the UDF? The UDF’s political approach based itself on its claim that it represents ‘the people’ as a whole.95 It embraced all sectors of society, except the apartheid regime and its (official) supporters, as its constituency; and this included shack dwellers. The question posed in the literature is: ‘Which voice, which class and which social groups within the class were dominant in the UDF?’ Officially, the UDF embraced the idea of ‘working-class leadership’, but it has been argued that in practice, it tended to be dominated by middle- class leaders and was thus directed by ‘populist’ rather than working-class politics.96 This debate was actually a bitter controversy in the 1980s, dividing the trade unions at the time into so-called ‘workerist’ and ‘populist’ camps, including violence between UDF and Black Consciousness-oriented organ- isations. The fearful accusation was that the UDF and the ANC would ‘sell out’ the people once in power. Van Kessel has argued that the UDF did indeed neglect the interests of the poorest of the poor in a process involving ‘inclusion and exclusion’ in the creation of a new nation.97 Her case studies conducted in Sekhukhune, Kagiso and Cape Town reveal that in the 1980s, hostel and informal settle- ment dwellers did not seek affiliation with the UDF and that shack dwellers’ vulnerability, given their tenuous foothold in the urban areas, discouraged them from participation in ‘confrontational’ politics with the state.98 Indeed, with the dawn of the ‘new South Africa’, fissures in the people’s camp became apparent, especially at the local level where ‘the marginalised and the out- siders in the new South Africa [became] most clearly visible: farmworkers, migrants, rural communities, squatters, immigrants, and sections of the youth, now dubbed “the lost generation”’.99 There was the growth of ‘gigantic new squatter camps … around the main cities’ in the build-up to and aftermath of liberation, which Van Kessel attrib- utes to tensions between township landlords and backyarders as the former increased rent in the context of housing shortages, overcrowding and rapid urbanisation.100 She concludes, based on the outcomes of the struggle, that 34 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use  History of the Squatter Movement in South Africa the UDF was guilty of subsuming, and even neglecting, the interests of ‘the marginalised’ in the course of the anti-apartheid struggle.101 To complement Van Kessel’s ex post facto analysis, it is necessary to consider studies of the actual process of organisation and mobilisation in the informal settlements during the era of the UDF, such as in Alexandra township, where shack dwellers lived side by side with formally housed township folk. Justine Lucas’s ethnographic study of civic structures in Alexandra during the early 1990s gives us a clue of how shack dwellers would participate in different ways in the township organizational project because of diverse structural and political factors.102 She found a marked difference between the mode of participation of shack dwellers who lived in the township’s yards, consisting of about ten formal structures and ten shacks, and those who lived in freestanding shack settlements that filled the empty spaces inside and around the township. She argues that where there was no landlord relationship in a yard; the tenants tended to create and maintain a well-func- tioning yard committee that served to address the practical problems of the inhabitants and provide an enabling social environment for healthy social relations. The Alexandra Civic Organisation (ACO) provided the political guidelines for setting up such committees and used them to take forward its township-wide campaigns. The ACO admitted that it had not done so well organising in the standalone shack areas because of not putting in enough effort. Its organisational model also did not work well in the shack areas because their unit was the yard. There was also the problem of bad and opportunistic leadership, whereby a ‘political entrepreneur’ organised one shack settlement employing patronage and autocratic leadership, giving rise to a ‘politics [that] was a combination of resistance, quasi-traditional leadership and intimidatory practices, a pattern that largely conforms to the stereotype associated with informal settlements’.103 Despite all the problems, Lucas observes that: ‘These yard committees are an inspiring example of self-organisation and participatory democracy in the face of poor leadership and harsh material conditions.’104 In civic organisation, there are underlying factors that go beyond the quality of organisational leadership and political strategy. Lucas notes that there appeared to be more social coherence, collectivism, co-operation and solidarity in the well-organised yards as a result of kinship and other social ties, while people living in the freestanding shacks had very little social 35 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use  Amakomiti connection and interaction with each other in the past and present. She concludes that ‘civic organisation [is] a complex phenomenon, with internal contradictions and frequent transformations generated by, and embedded in, social dynamics’, and that while leadership and organisation are impor- tant, ‘a broader understanding of civics can only be addressed if one also undertakes to examine these underlying social dynamics’.105 Lucas’s conclusion points to the need to contextualise the debate about the propensity or otherwise of shack dwellers to participate in struggle. It is nec- essary to view political phenomena with a wider lens, taking into account many surface factors and underlying dynamics such as those identified by Lucas, and indeed by Van Kessel.106 The latter, for example, underlines the vulnerability felt by ‘illegal dwellers’, leading many to shun visible, con- frontational politics of civics and youth organisations.107 She also points to ‘a general atmosphere of rising militancy throughout the country and of escalating state repression’.108 The latter included apartheid sponsorship of ‘black on black’ violence in the townships and shack settlements.109 The Inkatha versus UDF bloodbath in KwaZulu-Natal gave birth to many new shack settlements as people sought refuge from the violence: for example, the Nhlalakahle settlement in Pietermaritzburg began this way.110 Refugees from the political violence formed the first amakomiti of Nhlalakahle. It is possible that the focus on the political violence and the machismo concomi- tant with it has served to downplay the role of women in the shack dwellers’ movements. The agency and leadership of women in the squatter movements of the 1970s and 1980s was highlighted in the struggle for Crossroads, whereby the Crossroads Women’s Committee was formed by fighting against apartheid evictions that received international publicity and solidarity.111 These powerful women led the struggle behind the vision of winning ‘“a place for people without a place”, meeting basic human needs for social reproduction’.112 In the new South Africa, there emerged the Women’s Power Group in Crossroads that, in the spirit of South Africa’s community protests, fought for services and quality houses, staging a four-month-long sit-in at the council offices from 21 January 1998. Its fate, according to Benson, underlines ‘how this 1998 women-only, collective, public, political grassroots protest was, for the most part, not seen by local residents as part of an ongoing history of women mobilising in Crossroads’.113 The process 36 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use  History of the Squatter Movement in South Africa by which the sit-in was defeated and denounced by the authorities shows how women’s struggles were largely demobilised and depoliticised during the transition to democracy in South Africa. Moreover, though ‘women have asserted agency in the politics of informal settlements … for the most part, these experiences have been incorporated into or written out of official histories’.114 37 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/19/2024 5:34 AM via STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use