News

By Walter Fieuw (on behalf of CORC)

The socio-spatial dilemma

The interactions between spatial and social processes have occupied the imaginations of planners, geographers, urban designers and even economists and philosophers for many years. Essentially, urban and regional spaces are not removed from their ideological and political settings, but rather a reproduction of such social, cultural, political and economical relationships. Urban space is therefore not equal, but rather contested, especially in the intersections of the formal and the informal.

Marlboro Industrial is a contested inner-city slum in the wealthy suburb of Sandton in Johannesburg. The area has a complicated history. With the decline of industrial activity in the late 1980s, and the collapse of apartheid pass-laws, desperate factory owners advertised cheap accommodation in Marlboro Industrial area. People flooded from the overcrowded Alexandra and other surrounding townships. The informal rental agreement was simple: rent paying occupiers had the right to inhabit the derelict factories and construct informal dwellings. However, the residents of the inner-city slum has faced evictions ever since, with a spike in activity in 2012 (see these media reports: Daily Maverick, City Press, The Daily Sun, Independent Online and many more). The community, in response to the increased eviction threats, have formed a number of crises committees, such as the Marlboro Warehouse Crisis Committee (MWCC).

 Marlboro Studio

In October 2011, the MWCC approached the Informal Settlement Network (ISN), a network of settlement-level community based organisations mobilising local capacities around service delivery issues, to facilitate the enumeration of the settlement. Once the enumeration of the factory dwellers were completed, which is now the baseline with which the community counteracts the government’s eviction threats, the MWCC requested of support organisation CORC and university partner UJ to launch a design studio to explore tenure options linked to a long-term development plan.

The studio is now in full swing. The Marlboro Industrial Belt has been divided into 5 strips and will be covered by 10 groups, each led by a lecturer.

The students and community members were given a short briefing describing the task of field map and what they were required to find in the day, then sent into the field to begin the mapping process. They are working together to understand and document the nature of their respective areas of focus. Community members share their local knowledge of site conditions, while students captured the data while passing on the graphic skills of mapping. Regular meetings are held to discuss their findings, and interpret the spatial analysis together. In this way, the mapping of social processes in and between the factories, backyard shacks, roads and open spaces, and other urban characteristics are captured to reveal a rich spatial narrative. Yet, although the stories of Marlboro residents speak of resilience and inclusionary measures to ensure the best use of this area, their efforts are continually under threat.

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Marlboro evictions

On August 2nd, Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD) cracked down on the settlement with no eviction order. In the early morning hours, when residents were leaving for work, the JMPD moved in on 3 occupied sites and demolished 300 dwellings. They refused to talk to the community leadership and presented no formal interdiction from the court, only offering NGO representatives a hand written statement in a note book as paperwork for such eviction. They claimed that notice was given with no supporting documentation, then went on to say they don’t need to give notice because the of the 72 hour trespassing by-law which according to legal representatives requires even more paperwork than a general eviction order. The JMPD has not communicated its mandate with the housing department and now as result over 400 residents of Marlboro are now out on the street with no alternative housing options.

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A community member remarked to Eyewitness News,

At around 9:30 in the morning, we see the Metro guys here; coming to our area. They came to demolish the shacks without any notice, without any legal documents. They came to say, “No! You have to vacate the building.”

Socio-spatial exclusion

The urbanisation dynamics of Johannesburg is characterised by three main typologies of informality: 1) informal settlements, which have emerged from land invasions; 2) overcrowded rental stock and formal townships (including backyarders); and 3) inner-city degradation and dilapidated buildings, such as Marlboro Industrial. Each of these typologies have their own histories and measures of exclusion. Socio-spatial exclusion refers to the measures of how marginalised communities are denied access to the city, and in building more integrated and spatially just societies, becomes a rally cry for more inclusionary and pro-poor cities. In the case of Marlboro, the community is mobilising local resources to provide alternatives to evictions. The design studio aims to create the spatial analysis and social-use mapping required to really understand this complex informality typology.

Communities are providing the essential insights needed to break the exclusionary trap revealed by socio-spatial analysis. Evictions continue to break down the essential fibers that bind this community together. However, cities are still governed by sanitised conceptions of urban space, regulated by land-use planning and other planning apparatuses. These formal processes inherently exclude the poor, and denies access to the city.

The Marlboro Community, SA SDI Alliance and the University of Johannesburg partnership towards developmental solutions.

By Jhono Bennett (on behalf of CORC)

Marlboro is situated in the Northern of Johannesburg, in Alexandra. It is to be found in the vicinity of Sandton, one of the wealthy suburbs of Johannesburg. It is not easy for someone to describe Marlboro as an informal settlement as the shacks are inside the building and are not directly visible for visitors. However, if one can describe an informal settlement an unrecognised occupation of land or buildings, Marlboro can be called an informal settlement.

The building users left the area after the riots that occurred during the first elections as well as due to the increase of crime that occurred in this time. They left behind 53 buildings that people from different countries, provinces, areas came to occupy. These people make up the community of Marlboro and live in constant threat of eviction.

The residents of Marlboro formed a committee to represent their needs, the Marlboro Warehouse Crisis Committee (MWCC), and have requested help from the South African SDI Alliance their fight against eviction, and towards an equitable solution for their current circumstance.

Marlboro/UJ Studio

CORC within the SDI Alliance has committed to supporting the MWCC and UJ in the next 7 weeks in their process of developing an integrated and holistic vision that encompasses possible urban solutions that fit within a possible developmental framework. This developmental framework needs to address solutions on an urban scale, a site specific scale and detail level in possible structural and spatial interventions.

To assist in this complex and daunting task a partnership between the MWCC, the University of Johannesburg has been established.  This partnership is directly and actively supported by the ISN, FEDUP and recently a newly formed civil entity; 1:1 –Agency of Engagement.  Overall support by the Alex Renewal Project and local councillors has been offered as a whole.

This process is planned to be conducted through participatory research, mapping and theoretical design possibilities between July 16 to August 31^, with the students and staff of UJ working with the MWCC leadership and community members.

Aim of the Studio

The aim of this process is to produce a tangible and clear set of document that can be used to engage the city, and other stakeholders, in discussing a developmental future and possible ‘now’ solutions for the residents of Marlboro.

 

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/43978093[/vimeo]

During the process the concept of capacitation and skills transfer is being stressed to build the knowledge of these processes with residents, students and professionals involved.

This will expose UJ students to the urban conditions of informal settlement dwellers and ultimately add to the growing body of knowledge in informal community development, while up-skilling Marlboro community members to assist in future developments in Marlboro and future exchanges.

From the process, the aim is to document and help legitimize the needs and concerns of the Marlboro community in a tangible manner that can be used to capacitate the MWCC and the residents in order to engage the City of Johannesburg.

By Andy Bolnick (CORC/iKhayalami) and Benjamin Bradlow

The roller coasters and carnival games at Ratanga Junction Park in the Milnerton area of Cape Town may appear as a middle class child’s idyll, even amidst the winter cold and rain. But only a kilometer away, shack dwelling mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, daughters and sons, in an informal settlement called Mshini Wam in Joe Slovo Park are coming together to build a better life for their children. Collectively, they are influencing city government in a way that is, step-by-step, producing lessons for a future in which all children grow up in safe, vibrant, and nurturing neighborhoods.

The settlement of 250 families, is becoming a learning center for improving informal settlements throughout Cape Town. Yesterday, the community, which links with informal settlement leadership throughout the city through the Informal Settlement Network (ISN), invited city officials from the Informal Settlements Management Unit, Extended Public Works Programme, and city council, to celebrate what they have achieved. In less than one week, residents of Mshini Wam have begun transforming the physical layout of their neighborhood, through a partnership with the city government, ISN, and a supporting NGO called the Community Organisation Resource Centre (CORC). The ceremony celebrated the community’s work in “re-blocking” the dense, flood and fire-prone settlement, into organized clusters of 8-10 shacks.

The first cluster was completed on 23 February to demonstrate blocking-out to the community and to the Deputy Minister of Human Settlements, Ms Zou Kota Federicks who had come to Mshini Wam to attend the community led enumeration (household socio-economic survey and neighborhood map) launch. With three clusters done, the project is due to be completed in the next 3 months. In addition to the re-blocking, many of the shacks were improved with fire-proof, environmentally friendly materials.

The residents of Mshini Wam have, from the outset, claimed and owned this project. A community design team led the cluster-based redesign, with technical assistance from an architect at CORC. Luthando Klaas, when introduced to a reporter from the local Cape Times as a community leader, interrupted the reporter’s question. “No, no, no. I’m a community designer.”

This kind of assurance was behind the words of Nokhwezi Klaas when she spoke at a short ceremony with the invited parties. As she stood fighting back a mild cough, she spoke of the effect of the project on the community that she leads, and her own personal life: “As you can see, I am sick all the time because my shack is constantly damp from flooding.”

She then pointed to the “re-blocked” shacks and described how they were organized in a way that not only protected residents from flooding, but also created the space for the city to pave emergency access roads, and install electricity, and water and sanitation piping. Further, the community has been able to open up savings schemes that breed financial accountability and management skills amongst residents, who have then been able to contribute to voluntary shack improvements, in addition to the re-blocking effort. Community savings currently total R29,200.

As ISN leader Vuyani Mnyango noted, the upgrading effort is of dire importance in a settlement that not only suffers from frequent flooding, but has only 16 chemical toilets and 3 water taps for 250 households.

At the end of last year, the city authorities, ISN, and CORC agreed that, in order to do the required infrastructural improvements in Mshini Wam, it would be necessary to relocate between 20 to 50 households to an area nearby. The plan was for the city to come in and do the necessary earthworks and service provision and then the families were to move back. However, it became very difficult for the city to approve land that the community had identified for this purpose. No progress was made from March until last week.

The community wanted to begin and were getting very frustrated at the delays. The community leadership and ISN realized together that the best way to harness the community’s energy was to start blocking-out in an entirely in situ manner with no temporary relocations. Early last week, the city came on board in terms of supplying resources such as materials for the roofs of households (part of emergency starter kits), sand filling, crusher stone and compacting machinery.

The level of activity and community participation is palpable. Women are particularly active — clearing the site, collecting debris, loading wheelbarrows, carrying wheelbarrows, learning how to make the upgraded panels and then making them.

Yesterday, Mshini Wam’s Nokhwezi Klaas, along with ISN leaders, urged a representative from the city’s Extended Public Works Programme (EPWP) to join in this partnership. This would ensure that community members who work on such upgrading work are not only compensated, but also gain recognition for the skills development that occurs in a project like the re-blocking of Mshini Wam.

But this is not a project that is just affecting one community. Most significantly, Mshini Wam is a proving ground for a city-wide partnership for informal settlement upgrading between networked communities across the cities and the Cape Town municipal authorities. This alliance was consecrated in a memorandum of understanding signed with Mayor Patricia de Lille earlier this year. The re-blocking strategy, which re-arranges shacks in densely-packed settlements to open up common public space, access roads, and basic service infrastructure installation, is currently being rolled out in four settlements throughout the city this year, which is then set to expand to at least 18 more settlements. Through partnership between ISN, CORC, and Cape Town local authorities, the city is also able to explore other appropriate informal settlement upgrading strategies in a deliberate and collective manner. Overall, the city has committed R6 million for infrastructure, and is supporting community-led enumerations in all the identified settlements.

While policy-makers, academics and professional organizations struggle to gain even the smallest bit of traction on the ground to begin improving the lives of shack dwellers throughout the country, an alternative paradigm is emerging into focus. Little of this appears in the textbooks and policy codes. Rather, it is through practice that we can make out this new approach. When shack dwelling communities come together, and pool their own knowledge and resources, they are able to partner with local authorities and catalyze city-wide processes. As informal settlement-based learning centres spring up throughout Cape Town, communities are gaining influence, access to resources, and improved settlements and lives.

 

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The reblocking of Cluster 2 in Mshini Wam has begun!

ISN leaders have been engaging with City of Cape Town officials and principle field officers for more than 6 months, and now cluster two is in progress. The process of the reblocking process requires full participation of the community in the in-situ upgrading of their settlement. Yesterday, 5th July, 8 shacks were pulled down. The affected households stored their goods with neighbors, and the site was prepared through intensive manual labor. The community leveled the ground, supplemented by G5 filling material capable of holding the cluster’s weight.

Today, 6th July, 8 shacks will be erected. This new Interlocker material is of much better quality that the pervious shelters, and does not burn as quickly.

The reblocking process therefore requires full participation, and the disruption to people’s lives are minimal. The new cluster will be designed in a way that ensured no one is required to be relocated, and that neighborhood watch is promoted. The full delivery of services, such as an access road, is the long term plan, but for now, the space create ensures that toilets and water taps can be installed in a way that promotes community ownership.

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