Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 1: Dust and Ashesinterlaced and, in extreme cases like the suburbs of Baghdad, the slums ofRio de Janeiro, or the shanty towns of Port-au-Prince, they are subordinatedto military planning. [Zibechi 2007]In South Africa, Desai and Pithouse observe that the urban poor have found themselves“under armed assault from the state” [2004: 2]. In Durban, “The police that do thiswork, are equipped and conduct themselves like soldiers and are popularly knownin fear as amaSosha …” [Pithouse 2006: 8]. Elsewhere, the ‘red ants’ have come tosymbolise forced removals but are themselves impoverished casual workers hired byfirms contracted by local government. Even removals are privatised. The objectives,observed in all South Africa’s cities, are to exclude the poor from the centres where thecities hope to sell themselves to foreign investors and to discipline their consumptionof essentials. The scale of confrontation is escalating. In 2007, 10,000 protests wereofficially registered.The people so excluded have been made the waste of the global economic system asshown by the repeated use of the metaphor of cleansing to justify the removals ofstreet traders and poor residents. Robert Mugabe’s government in Zimbabwe madethe political stakes clear when it named its assault on people’s livelihoods and dwellingplaces Operation Murambatsvina. This was given the English title of ‘Operation RestoreOrder’ but was also known as ‘drive out the rubbish’. The Zimbabwean governmentwas widely condemned for the action, including by such institutions as the WorldBank. Yet this institution itself has been widely associated with similar operationsjustified in the more moderate language of globally sanctioned development.People who are seen as waste understand it very well. At Sasolburg, the people whopick waste from the dump explain why the local council did not consult them whenit handed out a recycling contract to a private company: “They say you are just peoplefrom the dumpsite. You are just scrap” [see Chapter 6]. This is echoed by casualisedworkers in Johannesburg’s waste system. In 2002, they told researcher Melanie Samson,“You are like the thing, which is inside that dustbin. You are just stupid.” [2004: 1].The Kennedy Road settlement in Durban is located next to the city’s Bisasar Roaddump. The people there initiated the formation of Durban’s shack dwellers’ movement,Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM), whose central demand is that they should be addressedas equals, capable of expressing their own will, and should take the central role indeciding their own future. They make the point that they are seen as “stupid, dirty,- 20 - groundWork - Wasting the Nation