Kennedy Road

Today we went to a neighborhood in Durban called Kennedy Road—a huge shantytown community situated on a hill, under the shadow of the city’s garbage dump. Hundreds of small shacks, pieced together out of corrugated steel and bits of wood, packed densely together with only narrow pathways and open streams of sewage separating the dwellings. It was my first time seeing something like this. In my travels I have seen many forms of poverty. I have been to poor villages without clean water or other precious resources, I have been approached by crippled beggars in many cities of the world, I have helped feed the homeless of my own community, and today I have observed a new category of poverty.

Unlike the rural poor, these slum dwellers enjoy the benefits of a larger community. When they need to they can even organize themselves into a critical mass of protesters to get the attention of the government –we met some of those community organizers today. They are also closer to the city, which means increased job opportunities, and increased access to healthcare and education (not that they are always able to take advantage of these services, but such services are nonetheless closer within reach than they would be in rural communities). Perhaps the largest downside to living in communities like Kennedy Avenue, at least when compared to other forms of poverty, is the density with which people live. What can be a blessing when it comes to political organization can become a terrible curse when it comes to sanitation, disease, and crime. Crime can be especially bad in South Africa, and of all crimes the one most prevalent (yet least talked about)—in this environment with so many women and children alongside so many unemployed and idle young men—is sexual harassment and assault.

What can be done to improve the lives of the people in the Kennedy Avenue shantytowns? It’s a complicated question. One organization, Abahlali baseMjondolo, formed four years ago by slum dwellers themselves, claims the answer is simple and can be summed up in two straightforward demands: land and housing. We met with members of the movement that is fighting for these things. Most vocal was the president of the movement’s youth league, a young man from a nearby shantytown. He’s a real firebrand. He held forth for the hours that we were with him, deploring the state in which he and the rest of his community are allowed to live in and calling repeatedly for the right to land and housing. He explained to us the work they have been doing in collaboration with the government to get these demands realized. And when they feel that the government is not listening they march—sometimes as many as 10,000 strong they march. And if they continue to feel that government is not listening to them, they have other tactics as well...they admitted that if they felt the situation called for it, they would even consider violence against the state. Actually I don’t think he intended to tell us that (in the States it would be a federal offense to have such a conversation, and the same is probably true here), but at one point it was I who asked him directly, “Would you ever consider violence?” He danced around the question for a while as one can imagine, but eventually his firebrand nature got the best of him and as he got so worked up in speaking he told us that yes they absolutely would consider it if need be. Violent protest, after all, is not without precedent in South Africa.

I felt conflicted about what I was hearing. Beyond my concerns about the effectiveness (leaving aside the morality) of violent protest—which can summed up by saying that I am much more of a “work the system” type than a “fight the system” type—I am also aware that while land and housing are certainly two important needs of the community, having the government build new homes does not necessarily address the more systemic factors that led to mass homelessness in the first place. People need income. They need jobs. With enough income people can become independent and buy their own land and build their own houses. So what is stopping people from getting these kinds of jobs? I would rather have that conversation than a conversation about a relatively unsustainable government housing proposal that would perpetuate people’s dependence on the state instead of helping them to become self-sufficient. Affordable housing is important, don’t get me wrong, and the right to land can give someone independence in a way few other privileges can. The point is these are complicated challenges whose only hope of resolution comes when the brute force of a movement can be married to a nuanced understanding of intricate problem.