The nature of western form of urbanisation in Africa was itself a violent process. Certain ways of life had to die to give birth the city life. Yet the city offers no refuge for Black life. South Africa - Johannesburg - 1 September 2023 - Early on Thursday morning, the five-storey Osindiso building on the corner of Albert and Delver streets in Marshalltown caught alight, over 50 confirmed dead. Picture: Bhekikhaya Mabaso / African News Agency (ANA)
Koyi Mchunu
The recent fire that gutted a multi-story building in Marshalltown, downtown Johannesburg, leading to loss of Black life is a dramatic enactment of everyday Black life in our cities. This serves as an indictment to those responsible for the management of our cities.
It would appear that Black life is still dispensable. Seventy odd lives perished, and counting.
The nature of western form of urbanisation in Africa was itself a violent process. Certain ways of life had to die to give birth the city life. Yet the city offers no refuge for Black life.
Africans continue to lead precarious lives on the neglected, nay undesirable parts of the city.
Danger is always around the corner in the form of disease, poverty, violence, drug addiction, unemployment. The list is endless. These are the fires that simmers in African communities.
The recent floods in the city of Durban were yet another reminder of how African poor people are constantly exposed to risk and danger in these cities. That they relocated back to the same flood-prone areas underlines the complexity of the challenge. The nature of complexity depends on who is telling the story among various stake-holders (government officials, NGO’s, criminals).
Criminals syndicates hijack and operate these buildings and informal settlements. It is estimated that there are some 643 hijacked buildings while the city has a housing backlog of 300 000 units. NGO’s espouse violation of human rights if such places/structures are torn down and inhabitants are evicted without alternative accommodation being provided.
Officials are seemingly reluctant or unable to enforce building regulations without police enforcement. I listened to an official trying to provide an impassioned explanation as to why such a building could be allowed to operate.
How we got into this nightmare situation is the history of Black urbanisation in this country; far-flung Black townships, single-sex hostels, forced removals, the rest in informal settlements, and lately, abandoned parts of the CBD whose rediscovered charm is increasingly becoming the playground for up-market speculative mixed developments.
Being a citizen of our cities is becoming prohibitively expensive. Street vendors pay anywhere from R500-1500 a per annum for approximate 2x2m 2 of sidewalk space to earn their meagre income.
In a society saturated by media, the tragedy has become another media spectacle whose punchline is on the poor and vulnerable members of our fellow citizens, soon to be replaced by yet another more captivating headlines in the circus of 24 hr news cycle.
The announcement that the city will reclaim similar buildings is welcome if only to put an end to this blight in our cities. This means relocation/resettlement. Where exactly is a story for another day. In the absence of concrete plans for relocation, the inhabitants of these buildings will no doubt continue leading fugitive lives in other parts of the city. Indications are that the city of Durban is following in the footsteps of Johannesburg in this process of what is regarded as operation Murambatsvina (Move the rubbish), or officially `Restore Order` in Zimbabwe.
This would be tantamount to relocating the problem elsewhere.In planning parlance these are LULU’s (locally unwanted land uses or NIMBY’s (not in my backyard).
Many contemporary urban struggles alert us to scenes of abjection, violence, many of those same conflicts also tell the story of incessant affirmation and defence of Black life within and beyond deathliness and subjection. In this sense, contemporary approaches to the Black city resonate with the theses on Black fugitivity.
Some scholars argue that the concept of fugitivity signals that in situations of violence and subjugation, there are always forms of Black life that resist and escape capture. Others argue that there is a type of city in which the ways of life are always under suspicion; cities which are cyclically threatened by processes of modernisation which dismantle specific modes of existence. That city, always under the threat of erasure, is the Black city.
It is this fugitive mode of the Black city that exposes its inhabitants to all sorts of vulnerabilities, prone to the predatory behaviour of criminals and slum landlords, themselves fugitives of the same system. Black city lives matter people. But then who cares.
This is a story repeated in other cities in Africa as they endeavour to emulate certain models of urban development, norms and standards beyond the reach of many citizens. In Kigali, Rwanda for example, restrictive urban policies deem informal trade and housing to be illegal and are forcefully implemented to promote order and cleanliness in the city. Exclusionary policies and development plans are set out of reach for most ordinary citizens, while their ability to contest these initiatives remains highly restricted.
By the late 1990’s, state officials and politicians in Delhi had begun to articulate the goal of turning Delhi into a `slum` free city` giving it a `world class` look, promoting an efficient land market, and converting the `under-utilized public land occupied by slum dwellers into commercially exploitable private property. The successful bid to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games placed the state and municipal governments under increasing pressure to `clean up` the city that was increasingly plagues by the so-called jhuggi/jhopries (slums).
In short, what we are witnessing in the city of Johannesburg is a common phenomenon in cities of the global south. A more humane approach to dealing with these challenges is needed. World class aspirations should not be in spite of the poor and destitute. How cities care for the least of these should be one of the hallmarks of caring, liveable, and vibrant cities that offer opportunities for all to lead descent and dignified lives.
Mchunu is with the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Department of City and Regional Planning
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