Spatial Reorganisation, Decentralisation and Dignity: Applying a Fanonian Lens to a Grahamstown Shack Settlement by Sarita Pillay
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Spatial reorganisation, decentralisation and dignity: Applying a Fanonian lens to a Grahamstown shack settlement By Sarita Pillay “The divided, Manichaean colonial world and its social relations are manifested in space –one Fanonian test of post-apartheid society is to what extent South Africa has been spatially reorganised” (Gibson, 2011: 187). 1. Introduction In Grahamstown, East and West are not merely cardinal points. East and West are not unbiased references to directional differences. In Grahamstown, East and West are contemporary manifestations of a colonial world that Frantz Fanon described in The Wretched of the Earth as “a world divided in two” (Fanon, 1963: 3). East and West are representative of the Manichaean (post) colonial town and its social relations. Grahamstown West is an area with well-watered green lawns, cafés and a sushi-bar, English-style private schools and a university named after one of Africa’s most reviled imperialists. It is a sector that aptly fits Fanon’s description of the “colonists sector”. It is a sector “of lights and paved roads”, a sector whose “belly is permanently full of good things” – it is a “white folks’ sector” (Fanon, 1963). Grahamstown East, in contrast, is host to the “colonised’s sector” (Fanon, 1963). Grahamstown East is an area of potholed and dirt roads; where many get warmth and light from paraffin; and where not all streets have names. Despite the visible divide between Grahamstown West and Grahamstown East, the binary of the contemporary South African town is slightly more nuanced than it used to be. The township, the “colonised’s sector”, is as much “a famished town, hungry for bread, meat, shoes, coal and light” (Fanon, 2004: 4) as it is a sector with suburban aspirations, as well as electrified, albeit shaky, government housing. But it is still a colonised sector. This is a contemporary South Africa town divided into black spaces and white (with occasional specks of black) spaces. The colonised sector and the colonial sector identified by Fanon are both state spaces. Created by the state, divided by the state and regulated by the state. However, Fanon also makes mention of what could be considered a third space, or a sub-space of the colonised sector, the space of the lumpenproletariat –the landless poor of the colonised. It is often an insurgent space, pushing into the colonial town, made of tin and inhabited by the most deplored of the colonised (Fanon, 1963: 111 & 129). “The constitution of a lumpenproletariat is a phenomenon which obeys its own logic, and neither the brimming activity of the missionaries nor the decrees of government can check its growth” (Fanon, 1963: 129-130). The spatial manifestation of the lumpenproletariat also obeys its own logic. It is often a space created outside of the confines of the state. That is, until the point that it is incorporated into the state, or smashed through violence. The lumpenproletariat and the shantytown are a people and a space that challenge the “security” of the colonised sector –they are signs of “the irrevocable decay, the gangrene ever-present at the heart of colonial domination” (Fanon, 1963: 130). This third space is also manifest in, or on the margins of, the post-apartheid/colonial town in the form of the shack settlement. EThembeni, a shack settlement on the outer edge of Grahamstown East, is a contemporary echo of this third space. It is a settlement of mud and corrugated iron homes, straddling the electrified matchbox houses of Extension 7. It is a world away from the cafés, green lawns and private schools. From Black Skins, White Masks, Fanon consistently used the trope of spatial delimitation and space as an idiom to describe the colonial world in his work (Sekyi- Otu, 1996). Whereas Karl Marx’s used time to describe the oppression of the worker –the quantification of time, the control of time, the dispossession of time—Fanon, although not dismissing the political salience of time, recognised that under the racially divided world of colonialism, the spatial characteristics of oppression are more pronounced (Sekyi-Otu, 1996). In Sekyi-Otu’s (1996) view, whereas Fanon’s work in the Wretched of the Earth focuses on the spatiality of racial/colonial domination on a juridical, socioeconomic and sociopsychological level –it is Black Skins, White Masks that explores the “geography of domination” psychoexistentially. In Black Skins, White Masks, Fanon (1952) relates that in the colonial space, the black man is a slave to his appearance, under the constant gaze of the white man. His discussion of the experience of the Negro in a train (in Chapter 5, The Lived Experience of the Black Man) illustrates the hyper-awareness of self, and of others’ perceptions of oneself, by the colonised. While in A Dying Colonialism, Fanon (1965) describes how the veiled woman and the unveiled woman in Algeria experience a gaze of pity and approval respectively, as they walk the streets of the colonial town. Fanon shows how, under colonial and racial domination, action and self- determination are constrained and withheld – spatiality is transformed into coercion (Sekyi-Otu, 1996). Colonisation was materialised in the physical limitation of space of the colonised, and the making of the colonised into the quintessential evil (Fanon, 2004). Spatial reorganisation is thus seen to be critical to reconstituting the decolonised society. “By penetrating its [the colonial world’s] geographical configuration and classification we shall be able to delineate the backbone on which the decolonised society is reorganised” (Fanon, 2004: 3). Fanon believed that a true decolonisation is possible when the post-colonial society has developed a humanist consciousness. A consciousness based on the recognition of the universality of human experience, founded on ideas and practises of being human –“a new humanism” (Fanon, 1952 & 1963; Gibson, 2011). Further, this consciousness building, and the building of the post-colonial nation, has to involve the thoughts and actions of the everyday masses (Gibson, 2011:13; Fanon, 1963). A successful post- colony is a decentralised post-colony, where the masses are agents of change (Fanon, 1963). In my view, failed spatial reorganisation in post-apartheid South Africa is a symptom of the failure to develop a humanist consciousness and the failure to view the masses as agents of change. Thus, through a Fanonian lens, this continued spatial divide in South Africa is a sign of an incomplete liberation (Gibson, 2011). It represents the failures of a post-colonial (or post-apartheid) nationalist party and government. It represents the failures of a centralisation of power and a stunted nationalist consciousness. It represents the perils of a tendency to dismiss the citizen, especially the poor citizen, as unthinking, a benefactor, superfluous. This paper intends to show how the experiences of residents in eThembeni, a shack settlement in Grahamstown, resonate with Fanon’s discussion of a failing post- colony. Further, this paper discusses how attempts by eThembeni’s residents, and other shackdwellers across the country, to reorganise their space are underscored by calls for dignity. Those whose humanness has been denied are appealing to a humanist consciousness that the post-colonial nationalist party failed to develop. For Fanon, practises and ideas of becoming human are essential to any successful decolonisation (Gibson, 2011). Considering this, the calls and demands of the spatially damned of South Africa could represent a move towards a true decolonisation. 2. EThembeni: “Place of Hope” EThembeni, meaning hope, or place of hope, was first occupied and established as a shack settlement in the early 1990s. “We [a group of people] tried to make a squatter camp. We forcibly occupied [ukundlova] this land, without permission.” (LQ, Male, living in eThembeni for 17 years)1. For some, settling in eThembeni offered an opportunity for independence, to have a home of one’s own. For others it was a place where they could build a home after having been displaced from nearby farms. For most, it offered the only accommodation that they could afford. But the initial optimism that surrounded the settlement’s establishment has worn off. Incorporated into formal political structures, the shack settlement’s future is dictated by the state and its associated bureaucracy and policies. Despite the community’s efforts at engaging with the state, the area remains without electricity, household water and sanitation services. EThembeni is not like the neighbourhoods in Grahamstown West, or parts of Grahamstown East. It is not “a sector of lights and paved roads” (Fanon, 1961). At night, the settlement is engulfed by darkness. “Here, you can’t leave your house alone. If you go out, you have to make sure that you are back before dark. It is like having a curfew – you are forced to be in your houses at night” (PB, female, 26). 1 All quotes are from interviews conducted with 25 residents in eThembeni between May & August 2012. Only their initials, sex and age are used, to protect their identities. The darkness is a barrier. A barrier that makes residents immobile, makes them fear for their safety, and makes them unreachable to emergency services. “…Once someone was in labour, and they had to go to the hospital, but it was dark and the ambulance was far - you could get robbed by criminals. The person couldn’t go, so she gave birth to the child in the house. When the ambulance arrived in the morning, the child was already born. The situation here is very painful” (VM, female, 48) It is a sector without household water access, without sanitation services and unreliable refuse collection. It is a sector with high levels of unemployment. It is a “disreputable place inhabited by disreputable people” (Fanon, 2004: 4).