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[Z-Afrika] Land is a Political Question
Transvaalbuurt Amsterdam-Oost - 14.10.2010 11:28
Onderstaande lezing werd gegeven in Zuid-Afrika in het kader van de strijd voor de krakers. De regering wordt daarbij gezien als deel van het probleem. De schijnbare sociale houding van herontwikkeling van het land waar de bestuurders zichzelf voor op de schouder kloppen wordt in werkelijkheid ontmaskerd als een politiek van ontruimingen en repressie.
Ter inspiratie voor de kraakbeweging...
land is a political question
Monday, 11 October 2010
Presentation by S'bu Zikode to the Development Action Group National
Conference entitled ‘Re-imagining the City: A New Urban Order’
*
Land is a Political Question
*
It is very nice to re-imagine the city. We can all start to imagine cities
with good housing for everyone and then we can imagine affordable public
transport and safe streets with beautiful trees, cool shady parks and
welcoming schools, clinics, libraries and sports clubs. We can imagine and
imagine cities where everyone’s humanity is respected and where everyone
counts. It is very nice to imagine a city where no one has to live like a
pig in the mud, where everyone is safe from fires, abuse, police raids,
disconnections, evictions and political attacks.
But land and housing are the most urgent problems in our cities and there is
a serious difficulty in resolving the issue of land and housing in our
country. Land comes before housing and this difficulty comes when we all
continue to pretend that the issue of land is not political. Until we accept
that the issue of land is political this difficulty will continue to add
more and more confusion.
The question remains very complicated when our country is administered by
politicians who talk about the struggle and about being for the people while
also pretending that the matter of land is not political. They have the
power to use their political muscles to take the land back to the
dispossessed but they prefer to pretend that the issue of land is not
political. We know very well that we are the dispossessed and that we need
justice. But the politicians and their NGOs continue to pretend that we are
the ignorant ones who need to learn patience and to accept that fire safety
workshops and forced removal to transit camps in human dumping grounds is
really development.
Those who are in power today have the power to distribute our land fairly
and freely to those who do not have land. Why have they betrayed us today?
The answer is simple. If they do so they will be giving away the very power
that makes them powerful.
Taking the land back will never be easy.
Taking the land back will require us to become and to remain the strong
poor. A year ago we learnt a hard lesson. We learnt that South Africa is not
a real democracy. The middle classes and even the working classes are free
to debate and to discuss the future of the country. But we, as the poor,
have been evicted from democracy. We were attacked and driven from our homes
with the support of the police and the politicians looked. Cosatu was silent
and the Human Rights Commission was silent. We have learnt that there are
many people who do not think that democracy is for the poor.
We need to make this democracy real for the poor. Therefore we need allies
amongst those groups who are allowed to think and to speak for themselves in
South Africa. They need to use their freedom and safety to stand with us and
to defend us as we struggle for our own freedom. Our organisations and
movements need to forge a living solidarity with progressive faith based
organization, trade unions, professionals in all specialised fields,
individuals and active citizens in general. We need to form a powerful
national alliance for urban reform that will always be willing to defend the
right of the poor to think, speak and organise for themselves. That alliance
has to be political and willing to force the state and the rich to obey the
people. It has to be clear that the social value of land must come before
its commercial value. It has to be willing to take real action to achieve
this. Therefore it has to be independent from the state. In our analysis
Slum Dwellers International is a top down attempt by the state and the rich
to control the poor by persuading us to accept our oppression.
Some of us have already joined this journey to a new urban order not only by
sitting in cool offices but by sweating in communities where we are busy
organizing, conscientising and being conscientised as we organise and are
organised by popular self education, meetings, camps and protests. Some of
us have already lost our homes in the land of our birth as our punishment
for struggling to access the well-located lands. It has been very evident to
us that well-located land will never be brought before us by aircraft, but
by sweat, beatings, arrests, and lies, water cannons, firing of live
ammunition or even death. This is the price which those who are serious
about the prize of A New Urban Order must be prepared to pay.
One cannot begin any meaningful discussion of the urban crisis while the
poor continue to be excluded from the conversations that are meant to build
the very new urban order that is for all. This discussion can only begin
once the dispossessed, those who do not count, count. We decided long ago
not to accept the situation where some people talk about the poor and even
for the poor without ever speaking to the poor. We have also paid a price
for this decision but we will always stick to it.
There is no doubt that the work of the intellectuals, town planners,
engineers, architects and other professionals is critical. We do need their
skills. But for as long as they remain on their own their knowledge is very
fragile. We need to plan our cities together. I remain convinced that if all
the work of the urban experts is done in isolation from the poor, those who
are meant to benefit from it, then it will not solve the problem. The first
problem is that despite all their education the experts are often really
ignorant of the real needs of the people. The second problem is that expert
ideas, even good ideas that fit with the needs of the people, have no power
on their own. An idea can only move into the world and start to reshape the
world when it has a living force behind it. An idea that is worked out
between the organised poor and the urban experts will have a living force
behind it when the organised poor accept it as their own.
The issue of land and planning is too political, much more political than is
recognised by many of us. It is too political and yet in most cases the
state and the insensitive consultants pretend that it is only geo-technical
feasibility that determines what is to be built, where and when. This has
been very evident in many communities in Abahlali baseMjondolo settlements.
People have identified well-located land and occupied that land themselves.
But again and again we find that what may be well-located land to the poor
is not so to the state and consultants and what they consider to be
well-located land is not so to the poor. In the Kennedy Road settlement the
municipality have always used technical reports to justify eviction. Their
reports have always said that the land is not good for human habitation
while our middle class neighbours across the road enjoy their stay. Everyone
knows that in fact the land is very well-located. All that is required is
land tenure, the provision of infrastructure and then an upgrade. In Protea
South and Thembalihle in Johannesburg the land that the poor have identified
and occupied for themselves is thought to be too good for them. But this is
not said. Dolomite is the only frightening beast that can be used to scare
and to justify eviction.
In his State of the Nation Address Msholozi himself committed his government
to acquire more than 6 000 ha of well-located land for the poor. This
promise came as a response to the struggles of the poor in the cities and
towns across the country. Obviously if the state fails to acquire and
redistribute this land there is nothing that will stop the people from
identifying and occupying such well-located land on their own. We will give
this our full support as a movement. If the alliances that we want to make
with the churches, trade unions, the intellectuals and the urban experts
will support us in this then we’ll know that they are really on our side.
For as long as human beings are living and dying in the mud and the fires
any politics of patience is just another name for oppression.
But the issue of Msholozi’s promise is not just a question of whether or not
the 6 000 ha is acquired and redistributed. There is also the question of
who decides what is and what is not well located land. Land should not only
be seen to be well located because it is identified by the state. The poor
have a right to identify land that is well located for them. If our cities
are to become just cities then we as the poor will have to strengthen
ourselves by further organisation and mobilisation. We will all need the
courage that was shown in the Symphony Way and Macassar Village occupations
here in Cape Town. Our cities require a strong leadership from the poor with
a real consciousness as to how the issue of land remains a fragile question.
Organisation, mobilization, active citizen participation and a clear
political consciousness will enable a popular democratic rebellion that can
put the will of the people against the will of the few to build our new
cities. The transfer of land to the poor and even to the working class
requires radical action. It requires an action with minimal transactions.
All these formalities and protocols are not just technical matters. They are
not neutral. These formalities and protocols are biased to the rich and
against the poor and have therefore bred many informalities resulting in the
creation of informal settlements.
Our new urban order can only be realised when the land that has already been
occupied by the poor is transferred to them with the full assurance of land
tenure. If more land is not made available for those who don’t already live
in well located occupations then the poor can find the new land themselves.
The state has a duty to invest in our communities and to support our
occupations through building infrastructure and maintaining it, far before
considering building subsidized housing projects. Land tenure must come
first, then the provision of services and infrastructure and then housing
projects.
The trend of sprawling growth in our cities shows that we may not have
enough land in the nearby future. In that case it may be worth considering
high-density development projects and decentralizing access to all socio
economic amenities so that a new planning may begin. But without fair
debates and open spaces for such conversations by all and at all levels this
may not be achieved or, if it is achieved, it many not be achieved in a way
that is just.
Our struggle and every real struggle is to put the human being at the centre
of our society, starting with the most disposed who are the homeless.
Washing away political discourse and narrowing the fragile political
question of land into a complicated technical question will not help any of
us at all. The organizing of the poor that takes place in our disgruntled
spaces is very important for any change. And in those discussions by the
poor who are marginalized because they do not count in our society lie some
of the significant answers that most of us fail to recognize. Instead the
blame for the evil produced by poverty is easily shifted to the poor. The
victims of an evil system find that they are presented as evil people. The
state, like those who continue to live in luxury life at the expense of the
poor, continues to see the demands expressed by the poor as illegitimate and
unreasonable. In fact of all the people in society our demands are the most
legitimate and the most reasonable because we are living in the worst
conditions. The demands of those with the most money and power are the least
legitimate. Logic as well as justice is on the side of our struggle to put
the will of the many against the will of the few which is the only way to
turn our imaginings of a new urban order into reality.
I thank you all.
--
Uyishayile!
 Website: http://www.abahlali.org/
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