Abstract
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.