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Healing Urban Fractures INSIDE A PANDEMIC Vulnerability, imagination, innovation in the City of Tshwane Urban Studio Annual Reflective Report TABLE OF CONTENTS Inside a pandemic p.01 Stephan de Beer Urban Studio: Annual Report 2020 p.14 Jude Nnorom When our demons are unleashed Lance Thomas p.16 Burgers Park p.21 Salvokop p.27 West Capital Precinct p.32 Mamelodi East p.39 Eersterust p.43 Woodlane Village p.46 Street homelessness p.56 Urban Studio Map p.66 Epilogue p.68 STEPHAN DE BEER ovid-19 is not really the but, because this takes place in great equalizer, as some the global South, the world does would have it. Instead, not come to a standstill and hardly C ways more visible than be- anyone gives it a thought. fore, it illustrated the cruel ine- The cruelty of debilitating poverty qualities that face humanity. And and the criminality of inequality only some have the ability to are not called out for what it is. protect themselves from the virus, Instead, it is regarded as whilst others are placed at greater inevitable. We even resort to Jesus, risk. Whereas Covid-19 reveals our interpreting his response to Judas, common and interconnected humanity, saying, 'The poor will always be with us!’ it also puts on vivid display our suggesting that Jesus thereby con- cruel and calculated inhumanity. doned poverty and inequality. What Jesus really did was to turn on the THE PANDEMIC, AND OTHER DEATH-DEALERS farcical Judas, pretending to care for the poor, whilst he not only Many have commented that Covid-19 exploited the poor, but was also is not the only pandemic we face at about to betray Jesus for money2. this time. Annually 7 million chil- dren die of preventable diseases1, 1 World Health Organisation, 2020, ‘Child Mortality’, https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/topics/topic-details/GHO/child-mortality, accessed 8 November 2020 2 Theoharis, L., ‘Understanding “The poor will always be with you”. Presented at the Vineyard Justice Network’s 2015 Forum: ‘Jesus, the Kingdom and the Poor’, 16-17 October 2015, https://kairoscenter.org/understanding-the-poor-will-always-be-with-you/, accessed 6 November 2020 Not only do we live inside the glob- less than the threat of temporary al Covid-19 pandemic. For many in Covid-19 shelters closing down. the sites and themes highlighted in ubstance users who had access to this report, negotiating daily liv- shelter and opioid replacement ing inside the pandemic is not so S therapy– finding a moment of stability much different from negotiating life and a real sense of hope, sometimes before the pandemic: hustling for for the first time in many years – piece jobs; avoiding the abuses of faced the streets and relapses into law enforcement agencies; fending substance use, as the lockdown lev- off sexual predators; fighting pos- els were relaxed, and the pressure U sible evictions; securing a safe to maintain temporary shelters subsided. space to stay; or ensuring at least one meal per day for your children. he cruelty of debilitating Homeless persons in the City of T poverty; the scourge of gender- based violence; the anxiety of teenage girls in neighbour- hoods with no access to safe, decent or private sanitary facilities; food deserts amidst massive wastage of food; are daily occurrences all across the world. In this report, they are named as real death-dealers Fig 1. People standing in a queue to receive food aid amid in our own city, the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak, at the Itireleng Informal settlement, near Laudium suburb in Pretoria. even though they do not affect everyone, as Covid-19 does. Those Tshwane, during Covid-19, feared the who make the decisions and dictate possible infection with the virus the future trajectory of the city FIG1. CGTN, 2020, South Africa to lift alcohol sales ban for home consumption, 25 May 2020, https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-05-25/S-Africa-to-lift-alcohol-sales-ban-for-home- consumption-from-June-QLYZNi6W4g/index.html, accessed 3 November 2020 HEALING URBAN FRACTURES INSIDE A PANDEMIC cannot be ‘infected’ by those who are often comes in the way of threatening poor, landless or violated sexually. local livelihoods or the right of Their general distance from the most people to be in the city, through vulnerable and contested spaces in attempts at replacing people with the city means that they mostly more profitable endeavors. remain unaffected by these death- In many of the sites, the presence dealing tentacles holding thousands of elected politicians does not 3 captive . necessarily translate into these communities –and the most vulnerable URBAN VULNERABILITY AND (LACK OF) VISIONARY in these communities –either having POLITICAL OR BUREAUCRATIC LEADERSHIP a voice, or experiencing having fair and proper representation. A lack of In the City of Tshwane, we entered visionary political leadership, a the Covid-19 lockdown being a city managerialist approach to urban under administration. This meant we governance, and consultative did not have elected ward councilors processes that do not include actively engaging their constituencies communities authentically in and serving their communities, ex- collaborative decision-making, have cept where they considered this left many of these communities in a their vocation and not merely a paid state of perpetual abandonment and position. Some ward councilors continued decline. Salvokop, the Woodlane Village, to serve their communities whilst and parts of the West Capital others went undercover. Precinct, are visible demonstrations of that fact. ut, even before the city was B placed under administration, with he bias of this report, and the hindsight we can say that successive T theological conviction that local governments led by different undergirds our reflection, is to political parties, often failed the prioritize the most vulnerable in communities featured in this report. considering urban planning, policy- These communities in many instances making and investment, in order to experienced slow but real decline, level playing fields. It is our disinvestment, and disinterest. submission that the well-being of When there is interest shown, it 3 In 2016, 18,2% of the population of the City of Tshwane – about 600,000 people – was living informally, with all the associated challenges. Source: City of Tshwane, Office of the Executive Mayor, 2017, Annexure 1: Integrated Development Plan 2017-2021, Final Draft, May 2017, http:// www.tshwane.gov.za/sites/Council/Ofiice-Of-The-Executive-Mayor/201721%20Draft%20IDP/Annexure%20A%20-%20COT%20IDP%202017-21% 20PDF.pdf, accessed 8 November 2020 the city should be assessed through people, blind people, disabled peo- how it includes and creates proper ple, with nowhere else to go, with no access to sources of well-being to public transport in sight, began a those inhabitants of the city that long march home to their villages… are most excluded or marginalized. Some died on the way. Not only the City of Tshwane, but cities and urban political leaders hey knew they were going across the world, struggle to T home potentially to slow starva- engage urban vulnerability in tion. Perhaps they even knew they decisive, imaginative, innovative could be carrying the virus with and radically inclusive ways. them, and would infect their families, Shoshana Brown4 speaks of how it their parents, and grandparents took a pandemic to expose New York back home… As they walked, some City afresh to its food and health were beaten brutally and humiliated care inequities. And in the by the police, who were charged megacities and towns of India, with strictly enforcing the curfew. millions of urban poor people were And yet, there are also real” driven out. In her essay, The attempts in other places to embrace Pandemic is a Portal, Arundhati the most vulnerable urban populations Roy5 describes the horror of not politically and otherwise. The belonging, when it matters. Partnership for Health Cities As the wealthy and the middle- convened online platforms where “ classes enclosed themselves in gat- cities as diverse as Chicago in the ed colonies, our towns and megaci- USA and Colombo in Sri Lanka, ties began to extrude their working- shared good practices and innovative class citizens– their migrant workers – ways of supporting vulnerable urban 6 like so much unwanted accrual. populations during Covid-19 . Many driven out by their employers A session for mayors addressed safe- and landlords, millions of impover- “ ly loosening physical distancing ished, hungry, thirsty people, young measures, and a second session later and old, men, women, children, sick 4 Brown, S., 2020, How cities can provide rapid relief for vulnerable people during the Covid-19 crisis, The Commonwealth Fund, 24 April 2020, https:// www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2020/how-cities-can-provide-rapid-relief-vulnerable-people-during-covid-19-crisis, accessed 7 November 2020 5 Roy, A., 2020, Azadi: Freedom. Facism. Fiction, London, Penguin Books, pp.209-210 6 Vital Strategies, 2020, No one left behind: Supporting vulnerable populations in the COVID-19 era, 15 May 2020, https://www.vitalstrategies.org/no- one-left-behind-supporting-vulnerable-populations-in-the-covid-19-era/, accessed 6 November 2020 HEALING URBAN FRACTURES INSIDE A PANDEMIC in the week guided cities’ public were unprecedented, and significant health teams on enhancing services gains were made. The new for migrant, homeless, incarcerated administration in the city since and other disadvantaged popu- November 2020, would do well to lations. attend to the innovative, collabo- ” rative model that emerged during In the City of Tshwane, after a this time, and to build on its false start, a remarkable recovery successes. occurred in how it dealt with home- 7 lessness during Covid-19 . In only CONTESTED SITES IN THE CITY OF TSHWANE: 21 days, 25 temporary Covid-19 CAN INCLUSIVE FUTURES BE IMAGINED? shelters were created, accommodating 1,800 people, and offering primary The Urban Studio is a deliberate health care, psycho-social programmes, attempt to accompany selected geo- harm reduction support, and family graphical sites and themes in the reintegration programmes in all the City of Tshwane, where socio- sites.

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