Living politics: Practices and protests of 'the poor' in democratic South Africa

This dissertation examines governance and political mobilization in townships and shack settlements, following the rapid reconfigurations of both state and slum after apartheid, in liberal democratic South Africa. Based in the South African city of Durban, an epicenter of recent protests and home to some of the largest slums in the world, I conducted research with the poor peoples' movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo (isiZulu for "people who live in shacks"). Since the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has endeavored to demobilize the street politics that characterized the late liberation struggle by cultivating civic participation in formal democratic institutions, such as voting, applying for social grants, and joining local ward committees. Protests by poor residents, annually on the rise since the late 1990s, have been officially condemned and met with brutality by police and private security forces. Townships and shack settlements - commemorated in liberation histories as heroic battlegrounds and shameful testaments to apartheid - have been recast in public discourse as 'slums,' sites of de facto criminality earmarked for clearance or development. Residents have referred to everyday interactions with state officials, and the kinds of practices that slum dwelling engenders, as 'living politics,' or ipolitiki ephilayo. 'Living politics' has arisen in reaction to both a lack of formal housing and basic services in townships and shack settlements, and to the active management of slum populations by means of routine episodes of police violence and forced evictions. The idea borrows from some now-criminalized practices of the liberation struggle as well as from new powers invested in recently desegregated state structures, notably the courts. This politics, focusing in a number of ways on attaining the means of reproducing viable urban livelihoods after apartheid, is premised upon collective identification as 'the poor' through shared material conditions across historically race-based communities. By examining the interactions, practices and logics that constitute 'living politics,' my dissertation demonstrates how the legitimate domains of political life are redefined, as is the extent of the public sphere, how state sovereignty is forcibly enacted, and how the production of new forms of citizenship and identity congeal at the intersections of race and class.