by Mandisi Majavu
INTRODUCTION
According to the South African Police Statistics, there have been an average of 10 000 demonstrations that have took place in South Africa annually since 2005 (Bond 2008). Some of these demonstrations were organised by the new South African social movements, and some were plain spontaneous rebellious post-apartheid moments.
These demonstrations can be seen as a response to a neo-liberal agenda being pushed by the African National Congress (ANC) government. That agenda largely consists of prioritising profits over poor people through the privatisation of health care and basic services. Post-apartheid social movements emerged in this context. And, it is for this reason that Eddie Cottle (2006) of the Labour Research Services argues that post-apartheid social movements can be viewed as a political formation response to neo-liberal policies such as evictions from homes, electricity and water disconnections and limited access to basic services, health care and education. It is partly for the same reason that some of the social movements that have emerged since 1998 call themselves Anti-privatisation Forum (APF), Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC), Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC), Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), Landless People’s Movement (LPM), Concerned Citizens’ Forum (CCF) and the Abahlali baseMjondolo (Shack Dwellers Movement).
As mentioned earlier, the main focus of this study is the MPAEC. The MPAEC was arguably one of the strongest and politically innovative social movements in South Africa between the year 2000 and 2005. The MPAEC was affiliated to the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign (WCAEC).
The WCAEC “was formed on November 2000 with the aim of fighting evictions, water cut-offs and poor health services, obtaining free electricity, securing decent housing, and opposing police brutality,” according to the WCAEC website. It is currently an umbrella body of 15 grassroots organisations, and together with Landless People’s Movement, the Rural Network and the Abahlali baseMjondolo is part of the Poor People’s Alliance.
The WCAEC website states that the WCAEC coordinators do not see themselves as leaders in the ‘traditional authoritarian sense’; instead, “we are the tools that are there to be used by poor communities fighting against the cruel and oppressive conditions of South African society.” In addition, the campaign assists communities to establish “participatory platforms whereby all residents are able to challenge their elected leaders and hold them accountable.” The WCAEC’s activities range from mass mobilisation to legal actions that challenge the constitutionality of evictions. The campaign has a Legal Aid Team which provides free legal advice to members of the community affected by evictions.
Mandela Park
Mandela Park is located in Khayelitsha, 26 kilometres from Cape Town city centre. Legassick (2003) points out that:
Not only is Mandela Park named after our former President. Every street in the community is named after a struggler for liberation in the ANC tradition – James Calata, Albertina Sisulu, Wilton Mkwayi, Robert McBride, Jenny Schreiner, Peter Mokaba, Bram Fisher, Winnie Mandela, Ahmed Kathrada, Thandi Modise, etc. etc. This reflects the fact that those who moved into the new houses in Mandela Park were overwhelmingly ANC supporters and activists. An ANC branch and Youth League, as well as SANCO, flourished at the start of the 1990s.
Mandela Park was established by banks that bought the land and started building houses on it in 1986. According to Legassick (2003), this is one of the few areas in South Africa where black people bought housing through bank bonds. When people began to move into the houses in 1988, the houses were not complete---for instance, some houses had no ventilation and some houses had cracks and no plaster, points out Legassick. The community made it clear to the banks that they were not prepared to pay for the houses until the banks attended to these problems.
In 1995, Servcon, an institution jointly owned by the post-apartheid government and several South African banks, was formed to deal with the situation. Servcon’s solution was simple: people must find a way to pay or else be evicted. By this time people had built up arrears dating back to 1988. As people who occupy the area are working class people, they simply could not afford to pay what the banks were demanding. So, in September 1999, the state sent in the sheriff of the court to evict the people who refused to pay. Thirteen families were evicted on that day, writes Legassick (2003); and, after 2000, the state brazenly evicted about190 families. By 2001, 30 houses a day were being evicted. “They were ‘right-sized’---relocated to smaller houses elsewhere in Khayelitsha far away from Mandela Park, in Harare or Makhaza” (Legassick 2003).
Enter the Mandela Park Anti-Eviction Campaign
The MPAEC was formed in late 2000 to fight against these evictions, and against the water and electricity disconnection that the City of Cape Town was carrying out in the Mandela Park area. Initially, the Mandela Park residents did not fight back nor did they resist the evictions. According to Legassick (2003), the Mandela Park residents did not have the energy to resist the onslaught all the time. Desai and Pithouse (2004) explain that it was difficult for the community “to summon up an attitude of defiance” because the banks were in cahoots with the ANC government, which people had invested a lot of hopes and emotions in. However, solidarity arrived from the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign (WCAEC). The fact that a ‘vibrant anti-eviction mass movement existed with its own language and rationale’ inspired the people in Mandela Park to establish the Mandela Park Anti-Eviction Campaign, write Desai and Pithouse (2004).
Initially, the MPAEC thought they could reason with the banks and the government. Thus, they proposed that the government should buy back from the banks the land on which their houses were built (Desai & Pithouse, 2004). The state was not interested in hearing the MPAEC’s case. So, the ANC simply refused to meet with the MPAEC, and, instead, the banks continued enforcing the evictions. Through debates about what strategy to utilise to resist the evictions, the MPAEC decided that the best course of action was to move people who had been evicted back into their homes.
“‘Seize our homes, seize our lives’ was the provocative chant that went up in Mandela Park; a chant that would become widespread, inspiring people all over the country and earning local activists the rage of the State” (Desai & Pithouse 2004).
The MPAEC further popularised a campaign for a R10-a-month (US$ 1.32) flat rate for basic services. Also, on 30 May 2002, MPAEC occupied the ground floor of the National Building Society. On 12 June 2002, MPAEC organised an occupation of Khayalethu Home Loans (KHL) company and “refused to let the manager leave until the company’s head office in Johannesburg agreed to attend a meeting that Khayalethu had previously promised, but failed, to appear at” (Desai & Pithouse 2004). It was at this stage that the banks applied for an interdict against the four campaign coordinators of the MPAEC. Legassick (2003) explains that the MPAEC had no money to hire lawyers to oppose the interdict. Consequently, the state used the interdict to repress the MPAEC, holding activists in prison for lengthy periods without trial (Legassick 2003).
Be that as it may, through its resistance the MPAEC won very significant victories against the banks and the state. For example, according to Miraftab & Wills (2005), on May 28, 2004, “A letter signed by SERVCON declared that People’s Bank (one of the banks owning properties in Mandela Park) agreed to settle the property debt (price), in which residents can buy off their property from the bank using their one-time housing subsidy. The letter recognizes that the average amount of loan provided by the banks toward houses in the area has been ZAR23,000, less than the government’s current housing subsidy of ZAR25,000. Nevertheless, the letter clearly limits the offer to the aged and/or disabled residents in Mandela Park.”
Criticism against the MPAEC
Like most social movements in South Africa, the MPAEC was a single-issue movement that remained “significant and effective only insofar as they are reactive” (Gibson 2004). Desai and Pithouse (2004) argue that although the MPAEC had in many occasions (between 2000 and 2005) made efforts to move beyond reactive and defensive struggles, their efforts were not always successful.
Pointer (2004) is of the view that the MPAEC was unable to transcend single-issue activism between 2000 and 2005 because an introduction of new ideas was never welcomed by leaders of the MPAEC. She points out that activists (largely white middle-class activists) from outside Mandela Park who tried to ignite debates about new ways of organising and struggling were ‘quickly made’ to feel like meddling ‘outsiders’. “Indeed, in 2003 those who continued to try and inject alternative, non-hierarchical practices were accused of having ‘their own agenda’” (Pointer 2004). According to Pointer, this served to block any inward reflection and was further used to purge any dissenters. As far as Pointer is concerned, “the only real space/role created for ‘outsiders’ in Mandela Park is providing funding for their activities and for legal defence.”
METHODOLOGY
This project utilises a qualitative research framework as its research methodology. Thus, in-depth interviews were used as the primary method of data collection. The rationale behind in-depth interviews is to allow research participants to reflect on their experiences.
According to Marshall and Rossman (1989), qualitative in-depth interviews are more like conversations than formal, structured interviews. “The researcher explores a few general topics to help uncover the participant’s meaning perspective, but otherwise respects how the participant frames and structures the response” (Marshall & Rossman 1989). Interviews are important because they allow for the flow of a wide variety of information. Marshall and Rossman add that they also allow for immediate follow-up questions, and if necessary, follow-up interviews to be scheduled at a later date for clarification.
Eight research participants were interviewed for this essay. The interviews were tape recorded and later transcribed.
Data Analysis
The data were coded and analysed using thematic analysis to identify categories, themes and sub-themes. Atlas Ti qualitative data analysis was used for this purpose. An a priori coding framework was initially used to identify key issues that emerged from the qualitative data. These were based on the objectives of the study, the interview questions from the in-depth interviews, and modified as the data analysis progressed, according to themes that emerged from the data.
DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
This paper shows that the politics of the Mandela Park Anti-Eviction Campaign (MPAEC) were influenced by left libertarian politics. Hence the MPAEC relied on direct action tactics to achieve some of its political goals. For instance, in 2002, the MPAEC seized a derelict school building and turned it into a community-run school, which registered 1800 children and employed 28 unemployed teachers (Desai & Pithouse 2004). This happened after the MPAEC conducted a survey that showed that about 400 youths in the area had been excluded from school due to inability to pay fees (Moshenberg, 2010). According to Moshenberg (2010), the students who participated in the survey, as well as the community at large indicated that they wanted a school. As a result, the Masiphumelele / People’s Power High School was established (Moshenberg, 2010)
It is direct action tactics like the ones described above that compel this paper to argue that the MPAEC was influenced by left libertarian politics. According to Rob Sparrow (n.d.):
"Direct Action" is the distinctive contribution of anarchists in the realm of political method. While reformists advocate the ballot box, liberals have their lobbying and their letter writing, bureaucrats have their work through "the proper channels" and socialists have their vanguard parties, we anarchists have direct action. Political tendencies other than anarchism may adopt direct action as a method but its historical origins and its most vigorous proponents are anarchist.
Thus, this paper locates the MPAEC within the left libertarian tradition. This is because, in addition to using direct action tactics, the MPAEC was in principle opposed to a hierarchical structure---hence the movement strived to implement a ‘flat structure’. At the root of the MPAEC’s philosophy was the promotion of poor people’s solidarity which cut across racial and gender lines. And, as this paper shows, the MPAEC had a deep class and international outlook. These factors are discussed in depth below.
The structure of the movement
Activists who were at the forefront of the MPAEC argue that the movement had a flat organisational structure. Bro Thami who often chaired meetings explains how decisions were reached by the Campaign: “We, as residents of Mandela Park, took decisions…there were no leaders…. Everybody had a say in the general meeting. The residents participated in decision making.”
Mama Balintuli, one of the women leaders of the MPAEC, agrees with Bro Thami’s observations. She points out that the Campaign was a “transparent organisation”, and that there were no ‘official leaders’.
“When it came to decision making, we used to involve everyone in the community. There used to be an open debate at a public meeting and people used voice their opinion about whatever we were discussing. It was beautiful…”
According to Max, one of the co-founders of the MPAEC, the movement operated without “official leadership”.
“We were working without a leadership. We were saying we don’t want to delegate powers to certain people, we want all of us to have power and be representatives of ourselves. People listened. That thing works! It works. I didn’t realise that things like a flat structure can really work. These are things that came from the people. It’s not like we learnt about it from a book. We relied on ourselves to make things happen. Me, Nceba and Fonky were facilitators, not leaders. ….The state targeted us as leaders. All the decisions were taken at general meetings. We were meeting twice a week--- on Wednesdays and on Sundays. And we used majority rule to reach decisions...”
However, Martin, a retired history professor at the University of Western Cape, questions the claim that the Campaign had a flat structure. According to Martin, the movement’s meetings for example, were dominated by Max and Fonky---both co-founders of the Campaign. Hence, “if people disagreed with them, it was too bad for them. They were sort of marginalised in meetings.”
Fonky explains that the group dynamics of the MPAEC were not that simple. He points out that “even a collective is led.’
It is important to note that what Martin and Fonky are highlighting above is what Jo Freeman (1970) called the ‘the tyranny of structurelessness’. Freeman’s basic argument is that the absence of official leaders in an organisation does not prevent the emergence of informal leaders. “Thus ‘structurelessness’ becomes a way of masking power, and within the women’s movement it is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not).”
Many people who were part of the MPAEC feel that Max and Fonky became leaders by default partly because they took the initiative in all matters related to the Campaign. Additionally, they had a lot of energy and were respected in the community. For instance, Mama Balintuli explains that she would not refer to Max and Fonky as leaders in the traditional sense of the term.
“They were leaders in the sense that they came up with the idea of the MPAEC. But they didn’t act like typical leaders. They debated everything openly and they didn’t dictate to the community or members of the community. They used to introduce issues and ask for direction from the community.”
What the above discussion highlights is that many social movements make the mistake of thinking that concepts such as ‘power’ and ‘leader’ ought to be eliminated. The goal, however, should be about making sure that ‘power’ is equally distributed to other members of the movement. Leadership roles ought to be rotated among members of the movement. Although the MPAEC strove to go this direction in principle, research reveals that the implementation of these values was not always carried out in reality.
Instead of employing a crude analysis that sees individuals as to blame for the MPAEC’s limitations, this essay argues that the Campaign’s limitations were partly due to a lack of clear ideological vision. Many activists within the MPAEC saw themselves as ‘socialists’, although it was not articulated what socialism means. The leadership saw themselves as being part of a ‘flat-structured movement,’ however there was no system in places to ensure that leadership roles were rotated. Max and Fonky remained the face of the movement, and other movement positions such as treasurer and the Campaign’s general secretary were not rotated.
Without the rotation of leadership roles and a clear ideological vision, gains towards self-management and participatory politics ‘will always erode’ (Albert, 2006). Over time, this is what happened to the MPAEC. And, this is the challenge faced by many movements across the globe. Michael Albert (2006) recounts how these dynamics manifested themselves in occupied factories in Argentina:
“…in Argentina in these occupied factories... you have all the managers leaving, all the conceptual workers leaving. And what’s left is what we typically call the working class, but in any case it’s people who previously were doing rote and tedious and repetitive labor. And they are left, and they take over all of those tasks and they make the factories work, even factories that were failing before work. ...However, they tend to set up again a situation in which even though everybody could do the finances, two people do it. And even though everybody could organize the character of the work day, three other people do it. And they tend to replicate the old division of labor, and over time, those people whose situation is empowering and the situations gives them daily skills and knowledge as compared to other people whose situation deaden them and make them tired, begin to dominate.”
The solution is to be conscious of these kinds of dynamics and, more importantly, there ought to be a clear ideological vision that is shared among the people who are trying to create a better world, writes Albert (2006). Additionally, movements ought to have systems in place that facilitates the rotation of roles in a manner that is consciously designed to reinforce non-hierarchical attitudes and anti-authoritarian rule. Further, whatever systems we choose to put in place to achieve these goals, those systems should be constantly evaluated and refined to ensure we accomplish the goals we have set out for ourselves.
Direct Action
Paris workers entertain themselves during sit-in strike,
According to Graeber (2009), the difference between direct action and civil disobedience is that in essence “direct action is the insistence, when faced with structure of unjust authority, on acting as if one is already free” (Graeber 2005). It is not to exaggerate to argue that most people in Mandela Park joined the Campaign because they saw it acting in this logic.
Zandile, who spent five years in jail for the MPAEC related activities, explains that she joined the AEC “because the MPAEC was the only organisation that was returning people back into their houses when evicted by the city.” Mama Balintuli adds that as the MPAEC “we came up with the strategy to let the police and the sheriff to evict people and as soon as they left we would help the evicted people to move back into their houses.”
Further, it was partly due to direct action tactics that made the MPAEC win many battles against the City of Cape Town. Fonky recounts ways in which the Campaign utilised direct action tactics to achieve their goals:
“When the city cut off our water, we reconnected it. We made an agreement with the City of Cape Town that we want to pay a R10 flat rate for water and we had a signed agreement. Everybody here in Mandela Park paid R10 a month for water. That was an achievement for the AEC. We also stopped the City from confiscating people’s goods. We told the banks if they want the community to work with them, the banks had to cancel the arrears.
“When we had demonstrations in Cape Town city centre and we did not have money to hire buses to transport people to town, we simply forced bus drivers to take people to town for free. Such tactics compelled Golden Arrows---the Cape Town bus company, to call us in and proposed that we at least pay R1 per person to get to town. When people didn’t have the R1, we would give them whatever money we had at the time. That was a huge victory for us. Consequently, Golden Arrows proposed an arrangement that if we want to have 4 or 5 buses, we must at least pay R300 and that arrangement was fine with us.”
This is what direct action can achieve. Graeber (2005) explains that when one is engaged in direct action, “one does not solicit the state. One does not even necessarily make grand gesture of defiance. Insofar as one is capable one proceeds as if the state does not exist.”
Max explains the feeling he got from using direct action tactics. “We felt like we are going to get everything right now. It was like we can make things, this is going to happen now.” He adds that the MPAEC wanted to make social change “without officials, without government.’
Another reason that the Campaign was politically strong is that it mobilised the whole community of Mandela Park, according to Martin. “The AEC’s strength was that it could mobilise the community and have successful campaigns…”
That success was a double edged sword. It brought them the wrath of the state. The Campaign was infiltrated by under-cover police. People that the state perceived as ringleaders were targeted by the police and constantly arrested on bogus charges. Captain Shivuri, who was the Khayelitsha station Commander at the time, explains how the police viewed the Campaign:
“You must remember that anywhere in the country where the law is being broken, the police will come in and infiltrate. With the AEC, they were breaking property [laws] and so that was the invitation for the police to come and infiltrate. Obviously we are going to come in. That’s why we knew each and every move they made.”
This in turn created a climate of paranoia within the movement. People began to see spies everywhere; old comrades became suspects; and the movement’s focus slightly shifted to rooting out spies. As the state repression increased in intensity, internal weaknesses (e.g. hierarchy and authoritarianism) of the MPAEC became pronounced. That led to internal conflicts, which rendered the Campaign ineffective.
Racial solidarity between blacks and coloureds
The AEC activists generated an alternative inclusive politics that brought together coloured and black community, which served as the counterpoint to the historical divisions and racial mistrust that exist between the two communities. The mistrust stems from a combination of historical and socio-political factors. For instance, after the emancipation of slaves (1834 – 1838), the Cape’s cheap labour pool more than doubled in size, explains Goldin (1987). Consequently, the coloured petty bourgeoisie and the skilled strata attempted to defend their privileged social position in the face of mounting prejudice against all “non-European” people, by the assertion of a distinct identity and the sacrifice of African interest.
Also, in 1924, white political parties combined forces in the so-called ‘Pact’ alliance. According to Lewis (1987), the 'Pact' entailed entrenching white supremacy in South Africa by protecting white workers from black competition, through labour policies that involved preferential living practices for whites. For coloureds, the Pact offered a 'New Deal'. In return for their support for the Pact's policies, coloureds would share in the privileges legislated for white workers, and “would be exempted from the restrictions applied to Africans – but as a separate 'racial' group sharing the values and cultures of whites” (Lewis 1987).
Furthermore, in 1945, at the behest of the Coloured Advisory Council (CAC), the government implemented the 'Coloured Labour Preference Policy', writes Lewis (1987). Goldin (1987) argues that the policy was only one element of a wider system of preference for coloureds. He points out that while the policy sought to secure employment preference for coloureds, the National Party also tried to improve the political and social position of coloureds relative to Africans.
This is the history that the AEC overcame in bringing together poor coloured and black communities in the Western Cape. Mama Balintuli explains how this process affected her personally.
The MPAEC used to work well with coloured community that was part of the WCAEC. We were all part of the Campaign. All the other branches of the AEC in Western Cape used to meet here in Mandela Park. It was my first time to work with coloured community. It changed the way I view coloured people. Before I didn’t trust coloured people. We used to talk about racism. We taught people that racism must stop because we are all human beings. We wanted people to stop referring to one another as coloured, white, or black. We wanted everybody to be united and not have people looked at differently simply because of their skin colour. We discussed these issues in meetings.
One of the strengths of the MPAEC was that it worked with different communities to achieve its goals. These interactions enrich many people’s lives and experiences.
White activists were welcomed to join the MPAEC as well. In fact the MPAEC worked closely with quite a few white activists. For many people within the MPAEC this was the first time that they had worked with whites side by side on an equal footing. Naturally, such an experience was empowering for them. Mama Balintuli explains what it meant to work with white activists: “we were not afraid of whites who were part of the Campaign---we used to call them comrades. We didn’t fear whites anymore---the MPAEC taught us a lot.”
Perhaps it is worth noting that whites were also viewed as people who have access to resources and money. Thus the role that white activists were expected to play was that of financing the struggle and the movement. Hence, when asked to define the role of white activists within the MPAEC, Mudeyi answered that “whites played a big role in our struggle, they gave money to the Campaign.” According to Zandile, “whites helped the Campaign financially.”
White activists also helped document the Campaign’s struggles. They wrote articles and research reports about the MPAEC. Fonky points out that: “white activists had all the resources. And they documented our struggles and put it on the internet and in the mainstream media.”
It should be noted that as much as the MPAEC was open to interacting with social groups from different cultural backgrounds, it was not a consciously anti-racist movement. Meaning the organizational structure of the Campaign was not designed in a manner that prevented people with class and white privilege to be fast-tracked into leadership roles. It was partly for this reason that activists of colour saw white activists either as intellectuals who documented the Campaign’s struggles or financiers who had access to money coffers. This is was one of the internal weaknesses of the MPAEC.
Women in the movement
Republican munitions factory during the Spanish Civil War
According to Rebecca Pointer (2004), the MPAEC’s struggle and structure was shaped by patriarchal power relations.
Discussions around gender do not even begin to make the agenda in groups like the MPAEC or the WCAEC, that is, there is no representation of women. When I have made my own attempts to raise these issues, I was told, for example, ‘you do not understand our culture’. … While the MPAEC consisted mostly of women, in meetings that I attended most of those who raised their hands to speak were men, and most of those chosen to speak were men. (Pointer 2004 : 276)
Women who were part of the MPAEC reject Pointer’s personal opinion that the Campaign was unashamedly sexist. Mama Balintuli explains why she does not agree with Pointer’s personal opinion.
“I was part of the leadership and so I was always with Max and Fonkie. We all used to plan together and it was my responsibility to publicise the AEC’s campaigns. It is a lie that women were not in position of authority in the AEC. It was the most transparent movement; even children could speak in our meetings. In our debates everyone was welcome to contribute in our discussions. A lot of women participated in the Campaign’s activities. There was Mama uNtuli, Mama uMagadla and there were a lot of other women from the Mandela Park who significantly contributed in the Campaign’s struggle. The only women who didn’t participated were Sanco members. It was socialism the way we operated. It was good for the people. It instilled self-confidence in me. Even if I knew I am not a good public speaker, people listened to me when I spoke in the meeting. And that gave me self-confidence. And people used to encourage one another. Women used to talk openly in meetings. In fact women in the MPAEC were the strongest and most active members of the community. Women had the most power in the MPAEC---more than men. They influenced decision making and they led the MPAEC’s struggles."
Mudeyi, also a woman and considers herself a good friend of Pointer, disagrees with Pointer’s personal opinion.
Women were there and participated. Being part of the MPAEC influenced me in a way that it got us together as a community. We stood together in everything we did. As a woman I felt empowered being part of the MPAEC---I became more stronger. Women were active and were not dominated by men. As a woman I was at the MPAEC office from 7 in the morning till late at night. I was very involved.
Zandile, a woman who spent five years in prison for the MPAEC related activities, also disagrees with Pointer on this issue. She argues that “women were never oppressed, they participated in meetings and led struggles.”
Martin has a nuanced take on this issue. He argues that although the majority of people in the MPAEC were women, women were not leaders in the literal sense of the term. However they were ‘very vocal’. Martin adds that “I don’t think women felt oppressed. I think they felt Max and Fonky were acting out of their own interest. And it was heavily dominated by Max and Fonky.”
The problem with Pointer’s personal opinion is that it is not informed by history, and it is not a nuanced social analysis that is sensitive to the social bond that has developed between black women and men in the liberation struggle (hooks 2000). Although bell hooks writes about the United States, her analysis describes many places where black people have fought against white supremacist oppression. For instance, she argues that:
“despite sexism, black women have continually contributed equally to anti-racist struggle, and frequently, before contemporary black liberation effort, black men recognised this contribution. There is a special tie binding people together who struggle collectively for liberation. Black women and men have been united by such ties. They have known the experience of political solidarity. ...this does not mean that black women were not willing to acknowledge the reality of black male sexism. It does mean that many of us do not believe we will combat sexism or women-hating by attacking black men or responding to them in kind” (hooks 2000).
In contrast bourgeois white women, who have not had as many positive experiences with men politically, cannot understand the bonds that develop between women and men in liberation struggle, points out hooks (2000).
Promotion of an international outlook
The MPAEC had a somewhat international outlook. However it is difficult to pinpoint the roots of this influence on the Campaign. Perhaps the influence came from international activists (mainly North American activists and Western European activists) who spent some time with the Campaign. When I asked Martin for his opinion on this issue, he replied: “By the time I came into contact with them, they were sort of …the ideological influences on them were those of the World Social Forum. Sort of anti-party politics and so on.”
Max seems to think that his visit to Argentina in 2002 had something to do with it. He says, politically, he learnt a lot from that trip.
“That visit helped us achieve a lot of things. After that visit, we had a number of successful events because I learnt some of the tactics we used here from Argentina. I’m referring to the blockading of the N2---I learnt that in Argentina. To hold government and city officials hostage, I also learnt that in Argentina. It is those tactics that helped us to be taken seriously.”
Max adds that the comrades he stayed with in Argentina were very hospitable---they took him to visit many communities and a place where Che Guevera was born.
“I went to a place where Che was born. There were a lot of commonalities in terms of our (i.e. Argentina & Mandela Park) struggles and the flat structure and the belief in collective approach in struggling. I was surprised that there are people in Argentina who are also facing evictions and water cut off. I was there for a month. I stayed with Argentinian comrades, and this was around 2002. After I came back from Argentina we organised an artist to paint a wall mural of Che Guevera at Andile Nose.”
Pointer, however, is of the view that the trip to Argentina was a waste because it didn’t benefit the MPAEC. She writes that
“The Argentinian trip was never reported back to the MPAEC or the WCAEC, so there was no way in which to discuss how to share their experiences, their learning, or how to build international solidarity. The trip to Argentina only served to boost the legitimacy in Mandela Park of the person who made the trip” (Pointer 2004).
Zandile disagrees. She explains that “Max came back from his Argentinian trip and gave a report back. We had a welcome party for him at Andile Nose where he gave a report back.” Mama Balintuli also agrees with Zandile’s recollection of events.
In his own words, Max points out that “when I came back from Argentina people were waiting for me at Andile Nose and I went straight there. That visit helped us achieve a lot of things….”
It is worth noting that Max made his trip to Argentina when Argentina was going through an economic and political turmoil. According to Paul Cooney (2007), in 2001 – 2002, Argentina had the largest debt default in world history. GNP declined by 11 percent in 2002, and half of the population was living below official poverty line, writes Cooney (2007). Additionally, people’s access to their bank accounts was restricted.
Argentina imploded into a widespread uprising; “within a week, four presidents had been deposed, factories and workplaces were put under workers' control, and popular neighbourhood assemblies organised demonstrations all over the country” (Bassi & Fuentes 1993). The driving force behind the uprising were the piqueteros---groups of unemployed workers, who expressed their anger through road blockades that cut the circulation of goods, according to Bassi and Fuentes (1993).
When Max says that he learnt the tactic of blockading roads from Argentina, he means that he first saw and learnt of this tactic being used by the piqueteros in Argentina. Moreover, the similarities between what the Agentinians were struggling for and what many poor South Africans are currently struggling for strengthened Max’s commitment to the project of social change. That trip deepened Max’s political insight, and it also positively benefited the MPAEC by expanding its political tactics and strategies.
CONCLUSION
This paper shows that the MPAEC’s actions and practices were influenced by left libertarian politics. Thus the Campaign utilized direct action to achieve its political goals. Additionally, the Campaign was in principle opposed to an authoritarian and hierarchical structure---hence the movement strived to implement a ‘flat structure’. Further, at the root of the Campaign’s philosophy was the promotion of poor people’s solidarity which cut across racial lines.
It is worth noting that the MPAEC’s strand of left libertarian politics has recently been deepened, refined and articulated by social movements such as Abahlali baseMjondolo. It is a political idea that is based on two concepts, namely: ‘living politics’ and the ‘politics of the poor’.
According to Pithouse (2008), the idea of a ‘living politics’ refers to a politics that disassociates itself from sterile ‘isms’---i.e.: ideological dogmas “abstracted from actually existing struggles that functions only to ‘give all the power to those who’” are well versed in these ‘isms’. To avoid falling into the trap of these ‘isms’, debates and political actions are then oriented around the real ideas and needs of poor people and poor communities, writes Pithouse.
“This is not an anti-intellectualism. On the contrary, it is a rigorous intellectualism that, like all serious intellectualism, prefers to engage with a real situation rather than take refuge in empty jargon. It is a commitment to a genuinely scientific mode of struggle (in the sense of a rigorously critical engagement with reality) against the pseudo-science of political dogma” (Pithouse 2008)
In defining ‘people’s politics’, Pithouse quotes S’bu Zikode---chair of Abahlali baseMjondolo, who says that it is “a homemade politics that everyone can understand and find a home in.” In other words, it is a politics that empowers communities and compel people to take power for themselves.
It is this ‘homemade politics’ that enabled the MPAEC to win significant victories against the state and the banks they were fighting against. However, the main weakness of the MPAEC is that it did not fully develop and, at times, it did not always implement these ideas. Hence some of the actions and strategies that the Campaign used to advance their struggles were not informed by their stated idea of wanting to build a ‘flat structured’ movement.
In other words, although the MPAEC’s practices were influenced by left libertarian politics, the movement, however, had no programme to counter authoritarian and hierarchical tendencies that later emerged within the movement. There was no system in place to make sure that leadership roles rotated among members of the Campaign. Consequently, there were two or three people responsible for chairing of meetings; two people influenced the Campaign’s political direction; white activists documented the Campaign’s struggles or brought in the money; one or two people were responsible for fundraising, and one or two people were responsible for articulating the movement’s agenda to the outside world.
When the state’s repression of the movement intensified, these internal weaknesses of the Campaign became more pronounced. And to borrow Albert’s (1974) words, “people began fighting with each other because the enemy was too powerful, and at the same time people lost their abilities to be humble, sensitive, participatory, and patient.” That effectively destroyed the MPAEC as an organisation.
The political idea behind the MPAEC did not die however. The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign still exists. For future research it would be interesting to investigate what lessons the WCAEC took away from the MPAEC’s history.
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Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign. http://antieviction.org.za/about-us/
