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KEEPING STOLEN LAND KWAZULU-NATAL's LAND, LABOR & HOUSING STRUGGLES a Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate

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KEEPING STOLEN LAND KWAZULU-NATAL's LAND, LABOR & HOUSING STRUGGLES a Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate KEEPING STOLEN LAND KWAZULU-NATAL’S LAND, LABOR & HOUSING STRUGGLES A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Professional Studies in Africana Studies by Jeffrey Lee Purcell August 2007 © 2007 Jeffrey Lee Purcell ABSTRACT This thesis explores the common roots of several contemporary social movements in Durban, South Africa. My point of departure is a series of community meetings in May, June, and July 2006, during which geographically separated Black and Indian community organizations expressed remarkably similar grievances against the municipality and government, all rooted, I argue, in the colonial dispossession and alienation of Africans, and later in the enforced marginalization of Indian communities. Largely, these dispossessions occurred in the 19th century and early in the 20th century – decades before the policy Apartheid begin in 1948. It is the continued relationship of exclusion and repression in relation to land and space in Natal, I argue, that accounts for the common struggles of these movements. I shall cite Antonio Gramsci extensively in order to argue that his conceptions of “consent” and “coercion” explain the perpetual success of policies designed to preserve colonial and Apartheid dispossession. Moreover, several labor struggles will be considered in order to illustrate the degree to which the majority’s consent has been secured, and to offer evidence that Gramsci’s theories are powerful assistance to us. Mahmood Mamdani’s identification of “subject” and “citizen” will factor, as the transition from Apartheid to ANC rule has essentially cemented the status of landless South African subjects. His lengthy iteration of indirect rule in Apartheid South Africa will become crucial to understanding how the transition was ineffectual for many. In addition, by surveying documents relating to the management and control of these populations, I argue that KwaZulu-Natal’s managers, through several succeeding governing regimes, have implemented policies of great similarity to achieve the same effect – keeping the power of land and space of Natal in the hands of Europeans. In response, a range of land, labour and housing community organizations have protested their government and voiced demands that show a continued resistance to policies of exclusion from and access to valuable land and space in the province. From their concerns and mobilizations, I will finally attempt to construct an understanding of what has, and has not, changed in South Africa. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Jeffrey Purcell graduated from Cornell University’s College of Arts & Sciences in 2001, triple majoring in Government (cum laude), Philosophy and History. He also graduated with Distinction in All Subjects. After receiving his MPS at the Africana Studies & Research Center, in 2007, he entered the Department of Political Science at the University of California – Los Angeles, to begin his Ph.D. in Comparative Politics. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The research for this project could not have been undertaken without generous support and friendship from the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College, www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs, where I was a Visiting Scholar in 2006. The thoughtful and friendly assistance of Amanda Alexander, Raj Patel, Shannon Walsh, Ashwin Desai, Molefi Ndulovo, Ntokozo Mthembu, Patrick Bond, Helen Poonen, Lungile Keswa, Des D’sa, Shirley, and Orlean Naidoo opened my eyes widely and helped me enormously. In addition, a Sage Fellowship from Cornell University allowed me to travel to South Africa for three months. A glance at the resources consulted will make clear that this is very much a Centre for Civil Society product – the scholastic and political activities of the CCS were of enormous value to my research and understanding of these issues. Finally, and of most import, I must thank the members of the Abahlali baseMjondolo, Westcliff Flats Residents Association, Wentworth Development Forum, South Durban Community Environmental Alliance and those in Durban whom I forget. It is their courage and stamina that brought my attention to this project. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction & Methods _______________________________________________________ 1 Gramsci in Durban - Consent & Coercion ________________________________________ 11 Gramsci’s Explanations ____________________________________________________ 13 Securing Consent __________________________________________________________ 19 The State’s Means _________________________________________________________ 21 Chapter One – The First Claims to Natal ________________________________________ 30 Consolidation _____________________________________________________________ 36 Governing Natives _________________________________________________________ 40 Chapter Two – Apartheid’s Land Policies _______________________________________ 46 Remaking Durban _________________________________________________________ 48 Space During Apartheid ____________________________________________________ 53 Chapter Three - Planning for Post-Apartheid ____________________________________ 62 The Strydom Report & White Paper on Urbanization ____________________________ 63 Strydom & The White Paper in Practice _______________________________________ 71 Evictions, Demolitions______________________________________________________ 74 Chapter Four – Gramsci & Transition, Reforming Apartheid _______________________ 78 Protesting the Clause_______________________________________________________ 81 Conflict-Free Workplaces___________________________________________________ 84 Chapter Five – Shutting Down Labour __________________________________________ 91 VW, Engen, Textiles _______________________________________________________ 96 SEWU ___________________________________________________________________ 99 Chapter Six – Constrained Land Reform_______________________________________ 107 Protecting Land from Reform ______________________________________________ 108 Return to Removals_______________________________________________________ 116 Chapter Seven – Conclusion __________________________________________________ 124 Durban’s Warriors _______________________________________________________ 135 Some Concluding Thoughts ________________________________________________ 142 APPENDIX I ______________________________________________________________ 145 APPENDIX II______________________________________________________________ 146 BIBLIOGRAPHY __________________________________________________________ 158 v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AbM Abahlali baseMjondolo ANC African National Congress BEE Black Economic Empowerment CB Collective bargaining CCS Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal CIEWU Chemical Engineering and Industrial Workers’ Union COFESA Confederation of Employers South Africa COSATU Congress of South African Trade Unions GAA Group Areas Act GEAR Growth, Employment and Redistribution GNU Government of National Unity IFI International Financial Institution KZN KwaZulu-Natal LTAB Land Tenure Advisory Board LPM Landless Peoples Movement LRA Land Relations Act NCMA Natal Clothing Manufacturing Association NEM Normative Economic Model NP National Party NUM National Union of Mineworkers NUMSA National Union of Metalworkers, South Africa PIEOLA Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act RDP Redistribution and Development Program SA South Africa SACP South African Communist Party SDCEA South Durban Community Environmental Alliance SEWU Self-Employed Women’s Union SPN Selections from the Prison Notebooks, by Antonio Gramsci TRC Truth & Reconciliation Commission Tri-Partite Alliance ANC-COSATU-SACP TSC Durban’s Technical Sub-Committee on Group Areas UKZN University of KwaZulu-Natal VW Volkswagen vi Introduction & Methods Durban, 1897 “The ruling power of South Africa is the power of the Anglo-Saxon race.”1 Harry Escombe in the Natal Colony Legislature, motivating the Zululand Annexation Bill Soweto, 1990 When Walter Sisulu was released from prison and went back to Soweto, he had said, ‘Much of Soweto has not changed since I first came to live here in the thirties…with few exceptions the matchbox houses are very much the same. A government who is not addressing the basic issue of decent housing is not seriously committed towards political change.2 Mandela Park, 2000 People who had been evicted from their homes by the Group Areas Act during apartheid, who had been forced out of ‘coloured’ townships as the government tried to police a ‘coloured labour preference policy,’ who had been forced to find shelter in squatter settlements, now find the same thing happening to them again.3 Life before Jan van Riebeeck stopped at the Cape in 1652 was neither idyllic nor pristine. Hierarchies, sexisms, violence and poverty are not new, of course, and we delude ourselves when we represent pre-European Africa as virginal. But it is not Shaka Zulu’s biography that weighs greatly in the contemporary lives of KwaZulu-Natal. Whatever life was like, things undoubtedly changed a great deal when the British firm JR Thompson & Company sent 26 to the area called Port Natal in 1823 to begin a trading post. The day I arrived in Durban in May 2006, I sat outside the Workshop bus station. A middle-aged white man stopped to talk to the obviously-out-of-towner. “What you have to understand, you see, is that South Africa is a first world country and a third world country,” he told me, a bit of
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