The Politics of Necessity: Community Organizing and Democracy in South Africa

2. Material Inequality and Political Rights

42 2 Material Inequality and Political Rights During a 1999 protest in Westcliff, outside Durban, local government councilors told angry residents that their housing demands were unreasonable. Ashwin Desai chronicled the exchange that followed: “[A councilor:] Why were Indians resisting evictions and demanding upgrades? Indians were just too privileged. One elderly aunty, Girlie Amod, screamed back: ‘We are not Indians, we are the poors.’ . . . Bongiwe Manqele introduced her own good humored variant, ‘We are not African, we are the poors’” (Desai 2002, 44). This refrain of “the poors” suggests a postapartheid identity focused on economic hardship crossing the racial and ethnic divisions that apartheid worked to entrench. Although race remains an extraordinarily powerful category and apartheid-era urban planning still divides poor communities, the potential impact of any broader organizing around poverty cannot be overstated . An estimated 1.4 billion people worldwide were living in poverty in 2005, surviving on less than $1.25 a day (Chen and Ravillion 2008). In South Africa, just short of one-quarter of the population would be classified as living in poverty according to this very low measure (RSA, Presidency 2009, 27); many others struggle to get by with little more. This adds up to an enormous potential constituency of “the poors.” Since the late 1990s, South Africa has seen growing mobilization in many poor communities as new organizations have grown out of past experiences of civic organizing around material concerns. The names of several of the movements underline their focus: the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC), the Landless People’s Movement (LPM), the Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC), and the Anti-Privatization Forum (APF). Participants have repeatedly defined
themselves as both poor and in need of a greater say in the public sphere. In this way, they work to connect their material struggles to demands for moredemocratic governance. These demands and the number of people who could potentially participate in making them are the root of the power, and perhaps the threat, of the politics of necessity. The material basis of struggles around access to electricity, land, housing, and other basic necessities has received important attention. In his discussion of “the poors,” Desai, like other analysts following him, emphasizes the stark shortcomings of South Africa’s postapartheid democracy and offers crucial insights into the definition and creation of a broader movement. But, he deals with only part of a complex process. His work does not consider the ways in which these struggles impact (rather than just reflect) the state of governance. It does not address how material struggles might affect demands for and the construction or strengthening of a democratic system. Some may respond to this challenge by arguing that democracy is irrelevant when people must struggle to acquire the basic necessities of life and therefore should not be the focus of analysis. This book argues, however, that democracy offers the potential not only to rein in discriminatory state actions but also to give people a greater say in government policies and priorities. Democracy ideally works to reflect the needs and concerns of its citizens, to constantly revise and reinvent itself and thereby to create a stable but open system of rule. Although no existing regime meets this ideal, formal democracy provides an important, though not uncomplicated, opening for engaged citizens to influence their government . Célestin Monga stresses this point by arguing that Africans have not generally perceived democracy “as a cultural fetish used to disguise famine, misery, and suffering” as some have claimed. It is, instead, seen “as a means of expressing citizenship, confiscated and perverted by decades of authoritarianism ” (1996, 10). Organizing collective action (whether to address material or other concerns ) requires the mobilization of participation and voice. These processes are also necessary but not sufficient for the functioning of any democratic system. Popular mobilization to achieve voice is not automatic. It requires a certain degree of agreement about the cause of people’s hardship and a crucial change in responses to that hardship. Piven and Cloward define a threefold process in cases of successful mobilization: a shift in popular consciousness whereby previously powerful institutions lose their legitimacy, an expansion of popular claims for greater rights, and the achievement of a “new sense of efficacy” for participants (1979, 4). Although a lack of anti-government protest should not be read as a signal of popular support for public institutions, some popular consensus regarding the diminished legitimacy of key institutions is crucial...