VAINOLA MAKAN 9. FROM INFORMATION TO KNOWLEDGE FOR ACTION IN BLIKKIESDORP Whenever men and women are condemned to live in poverty, human rights are violated. To come together to ensure that those rights be respected is our solemn duty.1 (Joseph Wresinski) INTRODUCTION I am sitting in a tent on a shaky second-hand chair with members of my organisation, Right to Know Campaign (Right2Know), and members of the resident community called Blikkiesdorp, watching a documentary. Blikkiesdorp, meaning ‘tin can town’ in Afrikaans,2 is named after the thousands of one-roomed tin houses which stretch bleakly, row after row, without a blade of grass in sight, on the outskirts of Cape Town. The surface of the floor is sand, and the power source to screen the film comes from a neighbour’s unit. The documentary tells the story of this community, living in this emergency housing site, their struggle to be heard and to solve their housing problems. Next to me, a little boy suddenly points excitedly at the screen and screams: ‘There is Grandma Jane!’ He jumps up and runs out of the tent to tell everybody that the community leader, who he has come to know as ‘grandma’, is in a movie. This chapter tells the story of Right2Know’s journey with Blikkiesdorp and the Joint Committee, an organisational structure in which ‘grandma’ Jane is one of the leaders. Watching the documentary was one of the learning moments in our effort to stand alongside this community while they crafted solutions to their problems. The film was also used to lobby support for Blikkiesdorp’s plight and create meaningful engagement in their quest for decent housing. The chapter highlights the challenges and opportunities in crafting solidarity while supporting the community’s struggles to access political and civil rights. It hones in on a particular occasion when we used popular education methods, and raises the tensions and contradictions we experienced. I start by outlining relevant elements of the national context before describing our experience of working with the community in Blikkiesdorp. I conclude with an outline of the lessons learned. The Right2Know Campaign was established in 2010 in response to the struggle against the adoption of the Secrecy Bill in South Africa.3 The Campaign brings together a range of civil society actors, including non-governmental organisations, A. von Kotze & S. Walters (Eds.), Forging Solidarity, 95–104. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. Vainola Makan - 9789463009232 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 10:08:29AM via free access V. Makan social movements, community-based organisations, the media, coalitions and faith- based organisations, to prevent the reversal of key civil and political rights, such as access to information and open democratic governance. Right2Know (2016) constantly seeks to draw poor and working-class communities into efforts to maintain an open and transparent society. Most of the supporters of Right2Know are activists based in these communities. Political Context The inauguration of the first democratic government in 1994 brought excitement and new hope to South Africa. However, since then, there have been increasing numbers of local service delivery protests in South Africa. Records show that protests increased from 10 per annum in 2004 to 173 in 2012 (Hart, 2013, p. 49). There are a range of reasons for these protests, which are well articulated by Gillian Hart (2013), Michael Neocosmos (2011) and others. These authors demonstrate how the contradictions of neoliberalism play out at local levels, where local communities and politicians are left to resolve the irresolvable within the contemporary development paradigm. Poor communities bear the brunt of harsh economic conditions which are infused by legacies of colonialism, patriarchy and racial capitalism. The Bill of Rights within the new constitution underscores the values of transparency, access to information, freedom of speech and political self-expression and accountability. These are important indicators of the fundamental civil and political rights that citizens should enjoy in a democratic country. When decisions get made in the public interest, information about this should be accessible to affected communities. Unfortunately, these rights are not fully protected, and the legal system is out of reach for the majority of the population. Instead of advancing, protecting and defending these constitutional rights, government officials and politicians aggressively and sometimes violently clamp down on those activists who register their grievances through pickets and protest action. This results in a shrinking political space for citizens to express their concerns, for example around increasing electricity tariffs and lack of housing. This is the context in which Right2Know works, where we try to ensure access to vital information, guided by the intended purpose of community struggles. This is done through building meaningful partnerships. FORGING SOLIDARITY The model of Right2Know is based on community solidarity. As our website states, full realisation of the right to know cannot be defined by individuals, organisations or borders. Our campaign is best served where we act in 96 Vainola Makan - 9789463009232 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 10:08:29AM via free access From information to knowledge for action in Blikkiesdorp concert and solidarity with like-minded people and organisations locally and internationally.4 The organisation works together in solidarity with communities to strengthen local struggles and advance their right to know. We are also geared to ‘defending the space to organise, challenge secrecy and gain access to information, to defend and advance the right to communicate, freedom of expression and the right to protest’. While activists pursue their struggles, they engage with learning in an organic manner and Right2Know supports that learning. The organisation is increasingly turning to popular education as a basis for its outreach work. Popular education interventions are therefore integrated into the organisational practices through monthly democratic decision-making platforms, workshop sessions and local awareness-raising efforts. Popular education material such as pamphlets, posters, flyers, community seminars, social media platforms and community radio engagements are important means for this. Right2Know values mobilising activists at community and grassroots level to achieve a society with a free flow of information; our organisation is therefore designed to function in the same way. Activists have a direct decision-making platform at the monthly provincial working group meetings where programmes of action are developed based on the contextual realities and decisions. Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández (2012, p. 54) quotes Freire, who says that: ‘True solidarity with the oppressed means fighting at their side to transform the objective reality.’ I next discuss the example of our work with the people of Blikkiesdorp. Background to Blikkiesdorp The City of Cape Town built Blikkiesdorp as a temporary relocation area (TRA) in 2007. It was not intended to last longer than six months, but at the time of writing (2016) it has already been around for nine years. In 2014 it was reported that there were 1700 one-roomed structures built out of tin. Given the estimation of at least 20000 people living in Blikkiesdorp, this suggests serious overcrowding. Research conducted by the Open Democracy Advice Centre (ODAC), a key partner of Right2Know, revealed an unemployment rate of 73 per cent. Blikkiesdorp has its origin in ‘forced removals’ as a result of the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa (Cassiem, 2010). An array of human rights violations resulted from the World Cup, including evictions and forced removals related to infrastructure upgrades and construction (De Paula, 2014). The development of Blikkiesdorp came as a result of by-laws created for the World Cup, contained in the Special Measures Act (No. 11 of 2006). Certain key public spaces within the city were categorised as no-go areas or ‘exclusion zones’. During the World Cup, South African security forces rigorously policed these spaces and the government set up a special court for the duration of the tournament to adjudicate violations and infringements of these and other laws. In the build-up to the tournament, there 97 Vainola Makan - 9789463009232 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 10:08:29AM via free access V. Makan was a significant increase in the number of poor people deported to TRAs in an attempt to ‘clean up’ the city before the international guests arrived. Hundreds of Blikkiesdorp residents claimed their relocation was due to their close proximity to Athlone Stadium, an official World Cup training ground (Haferburgm, Golka, & Selter, 2009). Blikkiesdorp was then and still is the biggest TRA in Cape Town. With more than 20000 people living in overcrowded conditions in tents and shacks, sometimes heavily policed, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign and other social movements stated that Blikkiesdorp ‘seemed like a concentration camp’ (Cassiem, 2010). Years after the World Cup, residents have limited police security and feel unsafe in a situation where unemployed youth are increasingly recruited as gangsters, resulting in an escalation of crime. In addition, there are constant complaints by residents that the structures they live in are weak and leak in winter (ODAC, 2015). Very high unemployment contributes to substance abuse, gangsterism and high levels of gender-based