Struggle for urban citizenship in South Africa: Agency andpolitics in the Enkanini upgrading project, Stellenbosch

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: As the world becomes increasingly urban and urban conditions carry promises of a better life, significant categories of urban residents inhabit urban centres in cumulative insurgent processes of gaining a foothold in the governance contexts that are experienced as being indifferent to their living conditions. Through utilising an ethnographic immersion into Enkanini informal settlement (Kayamandi, Stellenbosch) and analysing the resultant qualitative data, the study identifies, describes, interprets and explains the mobilisation of shack dwellers to access the axes of urban citizenship: land and services. The core argument of this study is that, despite the constraints put on Enkanini residents by the municipality and by those best described as 'former patrons' to achieve their goals, the residents did make some gains – particularly by establishing a sense of their urban citizenship for themselves and by engaging autonomously in a struggle towards that end. An understanding of these shack dwellers' struggle for urban citizenship was gained from social and planning processes that were observed in and around Enkanini settlement, including: perceptions of improving lives, processes of articulating claims and engaging with the municipality, and activities that portrayed patterns of engagement (meetings and protests). In particular, the process of how Enkanini obtained its existing services and residents' pursuit of expanding them was closely studied. What emerged from the story of Enkanini and is important in contributing to the understanding of urban citizenship are the processes and discourses through which shack dwellers position themselves as (un)worthy claimants of urban citizenship. In this dissertation, I present contexts of exception and neglect that are contested by shack dwellers, initially through clientelistic relations that are initially weakened, but later perceived to be strong by the state. Patronage is positioned as a (de)mobilising element in the genealogy of informal settlements within the context of the polarised electoral politics of the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the African National Congress (ANC). Enkanini residents' recent demands are read by the DA-led municipal leadership as a mere façade for ANC patronage and the politicisation of service delivery.The study identifies and explains the current articulation of 'improved life' by Enkanini residents who were haunted by historical legacies of neglect and the logics of patronage that displaced their demands. The innovations in solar energy solutions for shack settlements by Stellenbosch University are analysed with reference to the Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.zaivdisplacing processes that perpetuated the exclusion of shack settlements from serviceprovision. The solar energy initiatives were perceived by shack dwellers as adispossession of their upgrading discourse as well as a palliative response to theirenvisioned improved lives that were woven around connection to the nationalelectricity grid. The study identifies a municipality perceived to be indifferent based onhow it responded to the demands of shack dwellers by positioning the latter as urbanoutsiders whose settlement was seen as temporary, illegitimate or nonexistent. Thisattitude is explained as being sustained by political attitudes that led to a discourse onupgrading by the municipality that not only translated into maintenance of theprevailing status quo of neglect but that also fostered abandonment. The study thenprovides an analysis of shack dwellers' engagement with the local state to counter anddisrupt processes of neglect by exposing perceived dishonesty of the local state,visibilising their true conditions through self-survey, rebutting the political prejudices ofmunicipal leadership that viewed their mobilisation as a Trojan Horse of political rivals,and articulating and asserting their own discourse on upgrading that was built upondignity.In its analysis of these engagements with the local state, the study portrays thepractices and acts of Enkanini shack dwellers as those of citizens who have the rightto voice deficits in their substantive citizenship. Without falling into the trap ofromanticising the insurgent practices of shack dwellers, the study also presents theinfluence of and reaction to local politicians who punished the emerging autonomousmobilisation that bypassed them as brokers by endorsing the solar energy project inways that were experienced as divisive by Enkanini residents and that deflated theirmobilisation. The study site was unique in the sense that shack dwellers lacked thepresence of advocates and supporters such as nongovernmental organisations andactivists that have aided similar struggles elsewhere in the country.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University