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 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. Moreover, 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. These movements represent, I believe, an iteration of 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. 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; for that I must thank the Graduate School of Cornell University, and Professor Locksley Edmondson in particular. 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. 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 ASRC 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 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AbM Abahlali baseMjondolo ANC African National Congress CCS Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal COFESA Confederation of Employers South Africa COSATU Congress of South African Trade Unions GEAR Growth, Employment and Redistribution KZN KwaZulu-Natal LPM Landless Peoples Movement LRA Land Relations Act NCMA Natal Clothing Manufacturing Association NEP Normative Economic Plan 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 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction & Methods_________________________________________________________ 2 Gramsci in Durban - Consent & Coercion__________________________________________ 12 Gramsci’s Explanations______________________________________________________ 14 Securing Consent___________________________________________________________ 20 The State’s Means __________________________________________________________ 22 Chapter One – The First Claims to Natal___________________________________________ 31 The First Invasion __________________________________________________________ 31 Consolidation______________________________________________________________ 37 Governing Natives__________________________________________________________ 41 Chapter Two – Apartheid’s Land Policies__________________________________________ 47 Remaking Durban __________________________________________________________ 49 Space During Apartheid _____________________________________________________ 54 Chapter Three - Planning for Post-Apartheid _______________________________________ 63 The Strydom Report & White Paper on Urbanization _______________________________ 64 Strydom & The White Paper in Practice _________________________________________ 72 Evictions, Demolitions ______________________________________________________ 75 Chapter Four – Gramsci & Transition, Reforming Apartheid ___________________________ 79 Protesting the Clause ________________________________________________________ 82 Conflict-Free Workplaces ____________________________________________________ 85 Chapter Five – Shutting Down Labour ____________________________________________ 92 VW, Engen, Textiles ________________________________________________________ 97 SEWU __________________________________________________________________ 100 Chapter Six – Constrained Land Reform _________________________________________ 108 Protecting Land from Reform ________________________________________________ 109 Return to Removals ________________________________________________________ 117 Chapter Seven – Conclusion ___________________________________________________ 125 Durban’s Warriors _________________________________________________________ 136 Some Concluding Thoughts _________________________________________________ 143 Appendix I - Interviews/Meetings Consulted ______________________________________ 146 Appendix II - Program from the 25 June Social Movement Indaba _____________________ 147 Bibliography _______________________________________________________________ 148 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 a grin hanging from his lips. 1 Brookes, Edgar H., and Webb, Colin de B. A History of Natal.