Xenophobia and Civil Society: Durban's Structured Social Divisions

105 Pages·2010·1.06 MB·English

Centre for Civil Society
University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 4041, South Africa
Telephone: [phone] Fax: [phone]
E-mail [email protected] Website www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs

Xenophobia and Civil Society:
Durban’s Structured Social Divisions

A report commissioned by Atlantic Philanthropies, by
the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society

Baruti Amisi
Patrick Bond
Nokuthula Cele
Rebecca Hinely
Faith ka Manzi
Welcome Mwelase
Orlean Naidoo
Trevor Ngwane
Samantha Shwarer
Shepherd Zvavanhu

Released to the public, 12 July 2010
Xenophobia and Civil Society Durban’s Structured Social Divisions

Xenophobia and Civil Society:
Durban’s Structured Social Divisions

University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society

Contents

Acronyms and abbreviations
Case Study Sites

Executive Summary

Part I: Introduction
Terms of reference
Methodology
Sampling methods
Sampling area
Sampling size
Data collection
Structure of this report
Literature review
A timeline of xenophobic events, May 2008-July 2009
Durban civil society confronts xenophobia

Part II: Structural context
Xenophobia in structural and human terms
Socio-economic flashpoints
Economic decline
Xenophobia as state and civil society failure

Part III: Case Studies

Case 1: Chatsworth/Bayview and Bottlebrush
Historical, social and demographic presentation
What happened?
Where did it happen?
Who were perpetrators?
Who were the victims of xenophobia?
Who responded to the xenophobic attacks?
Box 1: The Bottlebrush incident and the politics of housing
Box 2: The Bottlebrush incident and xenophobia at the point of production
Box 3: Youth and gender dynamics
Factors behind the Bottlebrush attacks
Bottlebrush today
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Xenophobia and Civil Society Durban’s Structured Social Divisions

Case 2: Cato Manor and Cato Crest
Historical, social and demographic presentation
The sequence of events
The community and the police
Helping the ‘foreigners’ in and outside the Police Station
Box 4: Helping ‘foreigners’ at the Police Station and in reintegration
Why xenophobic attacks?
Housing and employment
Women, love, corruption and crime
Class dynamics, material basis in gender relations, cultural conflicts and non-nationals’
perceptions local women and men
Extreme retail business competition

Case 3: The Central Business District and Umbilo Road
Albert Park
What happened, where did it happen, and who were perpetrators?
Who were the victims of xenophobia?
Who responded to the xenophobic attacks?
Box 5: Op-ed analysis of the Albert Park attack, November 2008
Box 6: Spatial occupation and conflicting business interests
Box 7. Impacts of xenophobia on men, women, and children in the CBD
Warwick Junction/ Avenue
Sub-letting space, corruption in trading permits and exploitation
Perceived and real crime
Competition over space, goods and customers
Dalton Hostel on Umbilo Road
Housing, DHA corruption and competition over scarce resources
Competition for jobs, social grants, and housing
The victims of xenophobic attacks?

Case 4: Lower Morningside
Perceived and real crime, competition over space and xenophobic attacks

Case 5: Zimbabweans in Durban
Job opportunities, housing and corrupt health officials

Part IV: Conclusions and Recommendations
Civil society shortcomings across Durban
Box 8: Organising to overcome structural oppression in Chatsworth
Box 9: Partial success with short-term mitigation of xenophobia
From short-term scapegoating to long-term mobilisation

Recommendations

Commissioned by The Atlantic Philanthropies 3
Xenophobia and Civil Society Durban’s Structured Social Divisions

Acronyms and abbreviations

BFRA – Bayview Flats Residents Association
CAXREP – Coalition Against Xenophobia, Racism, Ethnicism and Poverty
CCS – Centre for Civil Society
DAAX – Durban Action Against Xenophobia
DHA - Department of Home Affairs
DFA - Department of Foreign Affairs
DSD - Department of Social Development
LHR – Lawyers for Human Rights
MCC – Mennonite Central Committee
RSPN – Refugee Service Providers Network
RSS – Refugee Social Services
UNHCR – United Nations High Commission for Refugees
WFRA – Westview Flats Residents Association
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Xenophobia and Civil Society Durban’s Structured Social Divisions

CASE STUDY SITES

Figure 1: Chatsworth/Bottlebrush shack settlement

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Xenophobia and Civil Society Durban’s Structured Social Divisions

Figure 2: Chatsworth/Bayview/Unity Avenue

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Xenophobia and Civil Society Durban’s Structured Social Divisions

Figure 3: Cato Manor and Cato Crest

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Xenophobia and Civil Society Durban’s Structured Social Divisions

Figure 4: Central Business District

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Xenophobia and Civil Society Durban’s Structured Social Divisions

Figure 5: Umbilo Road

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Xenophobia and Civil Society Durban’s Structured Social Divisions

Executive Summary

1. Describing xenophobic outbreaks and documenting the way local civil society responds
are useful tasks for a journalist, but insufficient for critical scholars. What is required is
to understand the profound structural crises associated with low-income communities in
Durban that help contextualise the recent surge of xenophobic sentiments, and that also
provide clues for long-term, bottom-up antidotes. These crises are being addressed only
up to a point by Durban civil society. They have their roots in market and state failures
that appear to be beyond the capacity of local organisations which are mainly equipped
to do local advocacy, service delivery and in rare cases political solidarity. These failures
include:

 extremely high unemployment which exacerbates traditional and new migrancy
patterns;
 a tight housing market with residential stratification, exacerbating service delivery
problems (water/sanitation, electricity and other municipal services);
 extreme retail business competition;
 world-leading crime rates;
 corruption in the Home Affairs Department and other state agencies in a manner
detrimental to perceptions regarding immigrants;
 cultural conflicts; and
 severe regional geopolitical stresses, particularly in relation to Zimbabwe and the
Great Lakes region of Central Africa.

2. Because they did not tackle these root problems head on, Durban civil society
organisations band-aided the local manifestations of xenophobia only in the short-run
and only up to a point. As the case studies of community/church responses in Durban
during 2008-09 show, the structural terrain for renewed conflict – probably in the wake
of the 2010 World Cup - remains relatively undisturbed. Durable socio-economic and
‘local geopolitical’ problems remain as challenges for more visionary civil society
strategists. Some of these can be found in sites like Chatsworth in South Durban, where
the Bottlebrush shack settlement was one of Durban’s most brutal sites of displacement
in part because of civil society organising failures over prior years. In other
neighbourhoods which serve as case studies – Cato Manor and Cato Crest, the Central
Business District and Umbilo – there are equally sobering lessons about the limits of
social organising during a ‘moral panic’ such as xenophobia, at this stage of Durban civil
society’s maturation. Ironically, there are hints of visionary breakthrough in several
relationships established by regional (Southern African) organisations, including the
celebrated solidarity expressed during the April 2008 dockworker refusal to unload
three million bullets and weaponry destined for Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. There is
hope for post-xenophobic Durban civil society, but only if we work through the
processes that have taken us from here to here.

3. Although there are many issues that are important to address, the central problems we
believe that can be tackled through public policy and civil society activities alike, are
unemployment and the exclusion of the lower classes of society from access to adequate
and secure living space. Whereas economic managers long ago introduced a dichotomy
between living and working spaces, with ‘The Durban System’ amongst the most
sophisticated of migrant labour schemes, this was an artificial division, one which
xenophobic attacks traversed by allowing resentments born and kept alive in the
workplace to be expressed in places of residence. Blame for xenophobic attacks thus
generated should be placed squarely at the door of the economic and political leadership
who, from the early 1990s, determined that post-apartheid arrangements would
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