Conceptualising resistance to service cut-offs and household evictions : the Mandela Park Anti-eviction Campaign

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The economic policy of the South African government referred to as the Growth Employmentand Redistribution Strategy (GEAR) has had a crippling impact on millions of poor and lowincomefamilies in South Africa since its adoption in 1996. The benefits to the minority havenot compensated for the increased inequality, uncertainty and poverty that others haveexperienced (McDonald & Pape, 2002:24).South Africa became the first African state to develop and implement a structural adjustmentprogramme by voluntarily seeking the assistance of the World Bank and the IMF (Bond,2000a:35). The government's own statistics reveal that unemployment, which was alreadyhigh, reached catastrophic levels since 1996 and the poor became significantly poorer(Beuchler, 2002:04). Together with their community leadership, poor people increasinglymanaged to articulate the link between the increased poverty and hardships they experienceand the state's macro-economic policies.More than a decade into democracy, Mandela Park finds itself under armed assault by theState. Several community members have sacrificed their lives while fighting revolutionarystruggles to ensure access to basic services and to remain in the places apartheid confinedthem. None of them ever thought that the hopes and dreams they harboured while fighting fordemocracy would be so brutally suppressed by the very government for which they sacrificedtheir lives.Community organizations such as the Mandela Park Anti-Eviction Campaign (MPAEC) makesignificant contributions to community empowerment by mobilizing and articulating thevoices of the poor and the vulnerable groups in the society to resist the State's hegemony withregards to service cut-offs and household evictions.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University