Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 6: Down at the dumpsexclusion. This, Raj Patel argues, “set off the street violence [the blockade of a highway],directed not against any particular piece of property, but against its flow” [2008]. Inresponse, the City acted as if it had declared low intensity war on the settlement andon the rapidly spreading movement. Abahlali protests were met with police violencewhile Kennedy Road was put under surveillance. This added a new dimension to asiege initiated in 2001 with the withdrawal of already inadequate services. The siegeis intended to persuade the residents to participate in the City’s plans to remove themto the peripheries.A new politics has thus been created precisely out of the community’s violent exclusionfrom the state’s project. Pithouse points to “the essential ambiguity” that attends theshack settlement: “… it can simultaneously be a site of political and cultural freedombecause of its autonomy from the state and authoritarian modes of enforcing ‘tradition’and, also, a site of suffering because the absence of the state means the absence of theservices – sanitation, roads, health, water, refuse collection and so on – that are neededfor a viable urban life” [2006: 5]. A similar ambiguity is evident in dump picking.Participation as pretence is anchored on the promise-to-be-broken. Even as KennedyRoad’s relationship with the City overall turned to open confrontation, the ritualshave been maintained in the relationship with DSW and the landfill. KRDC remainsa participant in the landfill monitoring committee and in the environmental impactassessment (EIA) for the proposed transfer station where it is anticipated that morejobs will be created.It also successfully negotiated with DSW to take over the labour-broking contract forsite cleaning for Bisasar Road, Mariannhill and Buffelsdraai from December 2006.This contract was previously held by Kelly Staffing who had employed NonhlanhlaMzombe, one of the Kennedy Road leadership, as a community liaison officer. KRDCrecognised that Kelly meant to use her as “an instrument” of social control, saysZikode, but it also saw the possibility that she would acquire the skills to managethe operation on behalf of the community and it formed the Kennedy Clare EstateCommunity Project for that purpose. Within nine months of the take over, however,the project collapsed. The KRDC felt that Mzombe had privatised the business andit no longer belonged to the community. The administration was also failing withworkers not being paid on time and the requirements of labour legislation not beingmet. Zikode sees this as a collective failure. KRDC did not contest the decision whenDSW withdrew the contract because “we knew it was within our weakness”. TheWasting the Nation - groundWork - 149 -