The housing question : race, class and space in Johannesburg 1994-2017

Abstract: This thesis, to varying degrees, reflects my personal journey, which is not unique, but a representation of Black life in the apartheid and post-apartheid era. It sought to answer the following questions: firstly, can the private sector profit driven objectives be reconciled with the state’s inclusive or integrated catalytic policy objectives in pursuance of an objective to mitigate the race and class poverty gap in the human settlements space? Secondly, to what extent are race, class, and inherited wealth barriers to entry by the working class and the lower middle class into the housing market space? In the attempt to find an answer to these questions, I searched for a point of equilibrium between the Black and White racial groups and what caused the widening of the poverty gap within the Black middle class and working class in the urban human settlement space. This initiative has been inspired by the current debate in South Africa that inclusive catalytic projects, without balancing the urban land affordability question, can mitigate the enduring and widening gap between the rich and the poor. I sought to make an intellectual contribution in the aspects of factors contributing to the widening of the poverty gap between the racial groups and between and within social classes in the context of urban human settlements. The study acknowledges the extensive research conducted in the field of housing in South Africa, most of which has dealt with issues of housing backlogs and the forever growing informal settlements. Whilst many researchers and scholars have traversed the race and class issues, there has been insufficient focus on the nexus of inherited wealth, state institutional arrangements, and the developer/state relationship which includes infrastructure finance, employment creation, and redistribution of wealth through integrated human settlements. This thesis offers reasons for the enduring and widening poverty gap between the White and Black households in the South African urban human settlements space and examines the contribution of the historical urban land ownership structure and its impact on racial wealth inequalities. The thesis further challenges the notion that White wealth and, by extension the racial poverty gap, is a product of hard work by Whites, and lack of diligence by Blacks that down plays the effects of racial capitalism on Black poverty. The argument is used to vi counteract redistribution with upliftment. In this thesis, I argue that wealth redistribution is necessitated by the historical apartheid economic land ownership policies which underpinned racial wealth inequalities, whilst upliftment requires co-operation between the state, the private sector, and civil society. Having said this, there are lessons to be learned from this experience. In tracing the history of land ownership in South Africa back to the Treaty of Vereeniging, signed on 31 May 1902 paving the way to the 1910 Union of South Africa, following the end of the Anglo-Boer War, the English and the Afrikaners divided the country up on the basis of race. These colonial powers excluded the indigenous nations, the Black people from sharing in the wealth of the country. It is argued that taking land away from the Black Africans was the beginning of the institutionalisation of race-based inequality and class division of the country’s wealth. Similarly, the rural/urban divide also assumed the same racial division and entrenched the inequality in the South African urban space. Therefore, to remedy this racially orchestrated inequality, this study argues that it requires more than neo-liberal economic reforms to remedy the effects of the apartheid land ownership structure. Furthermore, to address the housing question, the urban land redistribution dilemma has to be at the centre of the solution. Above all, the state and capital have to find a point of equilibrium where profit and welfare are not antagonistic contradictions. Given the limitations of the urban land policy, state welfare policy should be balanced with the contribution of the private sector to create conditions that can uplift the quality of life of the poor. It is argued that, whilst integrated human settlements are necessary, they are insufficient without addressing the urban land issue. The thesis rejects the notion that upliftment without redistribution is sufficient to mitigate the widening economic gap, not just between races, but between classes within the same racial groups. Whilst the study interrogates some of the neo-liberal policies towards the solution of the housing question in South Africa, it does not go as far as to suggest the complete destruction of the capitalist system as it recognises that social capital is also a condition necessary for wealth creation. Hence the suggestion that the solution of the housing question lies in the perpetual search for a discursive point of equilibrium to be found in the space between the state, the private sector, and the participation of the vii institutions of civil society in the housing delivery process. The working class and the middle class should be accommodated to play a constructive collaborative role in this process.Ph.D. (Sociology