“Such elements do not belong in an ordered society”: Managing rural–urban resettlement in democratic South Africa

In South Africa, the scale of rural–urban resettlement after apartheid continues to overwhelm the capacity of the government to house city dwellers in need of shelter. But the legitimacy of the postapartheid government rests on its ability to secure the rights of citizens who enjoy constitutional gu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of agrarian change 2019-07, Vol.19 (3), p.427-446
Main Author:	Levenson, Zachary
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Apartheid Citizens Civil rights dispossession eviction Housing informal housing Land Legitimacy Migration Oppression postapartheid South Africa Public housing Public officials Queues Relocation Resettlement Rural areas rural–urban migration Squatters surplus populations
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Summary:	In South Africa, the scale of rural–urban resettlement after apartheid continues to overwhelm the capacity of the government to house city dwellers in need of shelter. But the legitimacy of the postapartheid government rests on its ability to secure the rights of citizens who enjoy constitutional guarantees, including the right to housing. Because the government cannot simply repress this unhoused surplus population, it seeks instead to delegitimize some portion of it. It does so by developing a number of moralizing discourses, the subject of this paper, which distinguish between patient, deserving citizens, and unruly queue jumpers perceived to threaten the democratic project itself. Housing officials misrecognize squatters as a cause, rather than a consequence, of the state's failure to deliver, policing new land occupations with a draconian severity. They justify such repression in the name of protecting the democratic order, which is assumed to require waiting instead of improvisation.
ISSN:	1471-0358 1471-0366