Local state constructions of urban citizenship : informal settlement and housing

D.Litt. et Phil. (Sociology)This study explores local state constructions of citizenship for the residents of informal settlements in urban South Africa during the first decade of local democracy, with a focus on the last electoral term of this period. While many studies in the social sciences have reported on citizenship experiences and self-help strategies of various categories of residents of post-apartheid South Africa, few have directed their gaze at the state, or studied up by investigating powerful respondents or sites and processes of power. Given that the state has its most direct dealings with the grassroots at local government level, and that compared to ordinary people it holds a disproportionate amount of power over citizenship, the character and strategies of the local state in South Africa are critical for a comprehensive understanding of post-apartheid urban citizenship. The study focuses on the policy area of housing as a key response to informal settlement. A constrained developmental local state has emerged in the post-apartheid period in South Africa, exhibiting both Weberian and non-Weberian qualities in its political-administrative interface. While very little evidence of a skills shortage or limited capacity has surfaced in the policy area of housing in the metropolitan municipalities of Johannesburg and Tshwane, respondents in both sites reported that the available funds from the central state were vastly insufficient for addressing the identified housing need. This severely limited local state capacity to respond to the priorities identified by community consultation and systematic needs assessment and resulted in a perceived imperative to limit responsibility and supplement funds. Consequently, the two local authorities have managed their level of responsibility by changing definitions of informal settlement. In an attempt to lower dependence on the local state, they have also moved some responsibility for responding to informal settlement and housing need away from the local state. Although the lack of funds was deplored in both cities, their specific strategies have differed in important ways. In the City of Johannesburg, the local state recognised that housing shortages and informal settlement could not be adequately addressed if categories of nonqualifiers such as foreigners were excluded from city programmes. Elected councillors therefore argued for a relaxation of the criteria in the national Housing Code. To access more funds, the local state has relied heavily on the private sector, but this is likely to push the poor out of the urban centre and to isolate them from economic opportunities, which reinforces the apartheid spatial distribution. In order to reach a larger proportion of the population in need of assistance, the City of Tshwane preferred to focus its efforts on the provision of serviced sites rather than on housing. This strategy was implemented in addition to severe repression in the form of eviction and destruction of informal settlements as well as a policy of zero tolerance of new informal settlement, for which two related rationalisations were offered by respondents: the high portion of non-qualifiers who live in informal settlements and, in particular, the presence of foreigners, for whom they would not accept responsibility. While the City of Johannesburg’s outsourcing of low-income housing serves to extend the disproportionate influence of the private sector over elements of urban citizenship, the City of Tshwane’s exclusion of non-qualifiers and its forced removal of informal settlements represent a unilateral approach to constructing citizenship. In both cases, the result is a degree of continuity with the early colonial administrations and the apartheid government. Both methods have also inflated the achievements of the cities. The overall result has been the construction of a narrow, shallow and punitive urban citizenship for residents of informal settlements in South Africa since the advent of local democracy in 2000