Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork
Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork
Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork
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Chapter 1: Dust and Asheshouseholds 5 produce over half <strong>the</strong> waste while <strong>the</strong> dumps are located in poor areas[Swilling 2006]. Dumps are expensive but this is an investment that destroys value.The object <strong>the</strong>n, is to invest in removing <strong>the</strong> waste from wealthy areas and to invest ascheaply as possible in disposing of it at <strong>the</strong> ‘back of <strong>the</strong> shop’.Waste and war on <strong>the</strong> poorYet <strong>the</strong> relation between poverty and waste goes deeper than this. Development has,since <strong>the</strong> Second World War, been associated with geopolitical strategies. Thus, <strong>the</strong>green revolution promised a better life for <strong>the</strong> rural poor in Third World countrieswho might o<strong>the</strong>rwise be inclined to revolt under <strong>the</strong> flag of <strong>the</strong> red revolution. For<strong>the</strong> most part, it delivered new markets for corporate agri-business in alliance withlocal elites while <strong>the</strong> dispossession of peasants and rural workers was naturalised in<strong>the</strong> language of development as part of ‘<strong>the</strong> urban transition’. Policies that supported<strong>the</strong> accumulation of wealth in urban areas would, it was promised, create industrialjobs to absorb <strong>the</strong> flow of migrants. Never<strong>the</strong>less, permanent urban migration wasrestricted in many countries, including South Africa, in order to subsidise low wagesfor migrant workers with <strong>the</strong> shrinking product of peasant farming. Rural insurgenciesresisted dispossession across much of <strong>the</strong> Third World and were contained by <strong>the</strong>deployment of counter-insurgency strategies framed in Cold War terms. The defeat ofthis strategy in Vietnam was central to <strong>the</strong> crisis of US power in <strong>the</strong> 1970s. The empirefought back. In <strong>the</strong> 1980s, <strong>the</strong> US used <strong>the</strong> economic instruments of neo-liberalism toreclaim power and reframe development as a function of ‘<strong>the</strong> market’.There are now more people in <strong>the</strong> cities than in <strong>the</strong> country and one third of <strong>the</strong>m livein slums with little hope of secure work as economic growth yields fewer jobs at lowerwages. The urban poor are now at <strong>the</strong> centre of a development discourse which expects<strong>the</strong>m to create <strong>the</strong>ir own jobs through entrepreneurial enterprise. This follows <strong>the</strong>World Bank’s prognosis that, throughout <strong>the</strong> ‘developing’ world, <strong>the</strong> informal sectorwill now provide <strong>the</strong> jobs that <strong>the</strong> formal sector no longer offers. In South Africa, ithas been formalised in <strong>the</strong> language of <strong>the</strong> ‘two economies’ adopted by <strong>the</strong> Acceleratedand Shared Growth Initiative (Asgisa). Even dump picking is now counted as a jobin employment statistics. 6 As urban scholar Mike Davis comments, “it makes moreobvious sense to consider most informal workers as <strong>the</strong> ‘active’ unemployed, who haveno choice but to subsist by some means or starve” [2004: 25].5 This represents a much smaller proportion of <strong>the</strong> population as fewer people live in wealthy households than inpoor households.6 A fuller critique of Asgisa is offered in The groundWork Report 2006.- 18 - groundWork - <strong>Wasting</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>Nation</strong>