Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 6: Down at the dumpsofficial development processes on the optimistic expectation that the concerns of thepeople would be addressed, the City was increasingly working to a ‘world class city’agenda which involved the eradication of slums – principally by relocating people tohousing projects on the peripheries of the city. Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Durbanshack dwellers movement, had its origin in the clash between the people of KennedyRoad and the City when the latter sold off an adjacent piece of land to propertydevelopers. This land was long promised to start the process of upgrading the housingin the settlement and the City did not even inform KRDC of their intention to sell it.Housing, and land for housing, remains at the centre of the Kennedy Road agenda.Above all, Abahlali demands that shack dwellers be recognised as active participants indeciding their own future, capable of thinking and speaking for themselves.According to Pithouse, most of the people come from rural areas and are escaping“‘traditional’ authority, familial and racial domination (especially on white farms)” onthe one hand and looking for livelihoods and access to schools and amenities on theother [2006: 10]. DSW officials see the dump itself as having been a primary attraction.Before the City formalised operations, according to the owners of commercial recyclingfirms, over 600 people were selling them recyclable material picked off the dump andcould earn as much as R300 a day. Not all were from the settlement but a significantnumber of Kennedy Road families secured a livelihood, put their children throughschool and built their shacks from the pickings from the dump.Following the permitting of Bisasar Road as a landfill, the City increasingly assertedcontrol over access as well as employment but the now illegal dump pickers continuedto break through the security fencing. This gave the community leverage in negotiationswith officials, according to Abahlali president S’bu Zikode. Closing down illegalpicking was not possible without their cooperation. But in return for that cooperationthey wanted to secure the recycling and site cleaning jobs exclusively for people fromKennedy Road and take over the labour-broking contract with DSW for site cleaners.There are not, in fact, many of these jobs left at Bisasar Road. The commercial recyclersemploy 15 people on piece rates at the recycling pad established by DSW, while thereare 25 people employed as site cleaners.“Our struggle was for recognition first. We had to be recognised as human beings withrights to work,” says Zikode. The CDM project seemed to afford such recognition.Faced with the opposition of Clare Estate, the City and its World Bank allies cultivatedthe support of Kennedy Road. Khan saw this as a divide and rule tactic, saying, “I amWasting the Nation - groundWork - 147 -