CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 4 Motivation for the study ............................................................................................... 15 Aims and Objectives .................................................................................................... 18 Methodology ................................................................................................................ 19 The Life History Interview .......................................................................................... 19 Ethical Considerations ................................................................................................. 28 Chapter Outline ............................................................................................................ 29 CHAPTER ONE .................................................................................................................... 32 Theoretical Framework and Literature Review ................................................................. 32 Theories of the Local State .......................................................................................... 32 Social Movement Theories .......................................................................................... 45 Political Opportunity Structure .................................................................................... 50 Resource Mobilisation Theory ..................................................................................... 57 Identity Oriented Approaches ...................................................................................... 57 CHAPTER TWO ................................................................................................................... 80 From Marantha to Phomolong: Forced Removals and the Making of an African Township in Hennenman ...................................................................................................... 80 War-time Industrialisation, Urbanisation and the Housing Crisis ............................... 80 “Good town planning” as solution to the urban crisis ................................................. 85 Labour Control and the Housing Crisis in Hennenman ............................................... 89 Relocating the African population to a place “just far enough” .................................. 96 Half-hearted Resistance to the Removals .................................................................... 99 Early Life in Phomolong ............................................................................................ 105 CHAPTER THREE ............................................................................................................. 109 “Produced in the Best of the Difficulties of those Times”: Phomolong Youth Struggles in the 1980s .......................................................................................................... 109 1 Education Reforms and Student Politicisation .......................................................... 110 The Origins of the Phomolong Youth Congress (PYCO) ......................................... 122 PYCO Campaigns around Collective Consumption .................................................. 126 The Student Congress and the Struggle for “Little Freedoms” ................................. 131 Violence and Youth Struggles in Phomolong ............................................................ 136 Women’s Participation in Township Struggles ......................................................... 142 CHAPTER FOUR ................................................................................................................ 147 The Eagles Club and Counter-organisation in Phomolong: 1985 – 1990 ...................... 147 Flying High: The Eagles Club and Free State Politics .............................................. 148 Between “nice time” and political activism: The Eagles Club in Phomolong .......... 154 “Demobilise, depoliticise, disorganise and divide”: Vigilante Activity in Phomolong .................................................................................................................................... 162 Phomolong in Transition – “We had no control and the people’s expectations were too high” ...................................................................................................................... 173 The Transition in a National Context ......................................................................... 174 Negotiating a New System of Local Government ..................................................... 180 The Launch of the Phomolong Civic Association and the ANC ............................... 186 Constituting the TLC: “An Indictment to our Generation” ....................................... 191 Cut from the same cloth as the old apartheid councils? ............................................. 196 “We are going to take over” – The TLC faces a challenge ....................................... 200 The Democratic Local Government Elections – The people also “thought their problems were over.” ................................................................................................. 204 Heightened Demands for Collective Consumption ................................................... 209 CHAPTER SIX .................................................................................................................... 220 Post-Apartheid Protest and Resistance in Phomolong ..................................................... 220 The New Local Government Dispensation ................................................................ 221 Developmental Local Government and its Challenges .............................................. 223 The Character of Service Delivery Protests ............................................................... 230 2 Developmental Local Government in Phomolong .................................................... 232 The 2005 Protests - “Hiring people who did not struggle” ........................................ 235 The Genesis of the Crisis Committee - “We are going to Change Hennenman Today” .................................................................................................................................... 238 Collective Consumption - “We were crying about service delivery” ........................ 241 The Ward Committee was constituted of “yes people” ............................................. 244 “How we won the War” – Events Marking the Protest in Phomolong ...................... 251 CHAPTER SEVEN .............................................................................................................. 261 “We are not a Concerned Group, We are a Crisis Committee” ..................................... 261 The Social Composition of the Crisis Committee ..................................................... 261 Why we joined the Crisis Committee ........................................................................ 264 Crafting a Collective Identity for the Crisis Committee ............................................ 271 Collective Action and Counter- framing .................................................................... 275 Crisis Committee and Resource Mobilisation ........................................................... 280 “Many faces of the Struggle” - The Leadership Tactics ............................................ 287 “A Man’s World” - The Crisis Committee as a Gendered Space .............................. 289 “New rifts” – The Crisis Committee Disintegrates .................................................... 293 The Limits of the Crisis Committee ........................................................................... 296 CHAPTER EIGHT .............................................................................................................. 300 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................ 308 3 INTRODUCTION The area interrogated in this study is Phomolong1 Township – an African township situated six kilometres from the small town of Hennenman in the northern Free State. Hennenman and Phomolong form part of the Matjhabeng local municipality, which consists of other towns such as Odendaalsrus, Welkom, Virginia, Allanridge and their adjoining African townships. Phomolong Township was proclaimed on the 14th of April 1950.2 Its establishment was as a result of the relocation of Africans from the centre of Hennenman town. This was in many respects a ‘black spot’ in the vicinity of a white urban area known simply as Hennenman. The relocation of the old location happened in 1952, the same year in which it was de-proclaimed. Phomolong’s history can be traced back from the segregationist policies of the United Party government in the post war era. However, moves to relocate Africans from Hennenman became more pronounced and coordinated after the This thesis is concerned with the development and evolution of local struggles in Phomolong over a twenty-year period (1985-2005). It traces the early formation of political movements in Phomolong in the 1980s, their ideology, political networks and modus operandi. Moreover, the study examines the structural factors informing local struggles in Phomolong in their nascent years. The interplay between the structural basis, the intra-organisational and subjective dynamics in local struggles is highlighted