Abstract
The social movement Reclaim the City (RTC) emerged in 2017 due to gentrification, which challenges the right to housing in Cape Town. Citizens cannot afford the rising cost of living, and once again the most vulnerable groups of society, black and coloured people, are affected by evictions. RTC has called for affordable housing and has occupied houses to provide a home for evictees. In the space of the occupation, RTC activists organize daily life and their protest activities.
Against the backdrop of gentrification processes, this chapter draws attention to the self-organization of RTC, with regard to everyday life in the occupied houses, security, and political activism. The RTC occupation is an attempt to solve the housing crisis that the municipality is not able to address adequately. As a result, the relationship with the municipality is ambiguous, complementary, and full of contradictions. Thus, the article rejects simplistic and structuralist arguments in respect of the relationship between social movements and the state as opponents, and unpacks how research on governance and self-organization enriches social movement theory.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
For an overview on the debate on governance, see Bröchler and Lauth (2014), Börzel and Risse (2010), or Risse (2011). Beyond, the debate on self-organization is situated in many academic fields, for instance it is associated with self-help groups (cf. Neubert, 2021). The whole debate has also a bias as it is predominantly focused on Europe and North America (Neubert, 2021; Pfeilschifter et al., 2020).
- 4.
Self-organization focuses on the process of collectivization through which shared interests become stabilized in social relationships. Self-governance means the organizing of a group based on shared norms or values (Pfeilschifter et al., 2020: 10). RTC exhibits self-governance and self-organization likewise. Because the set of rules of RTC is subject to constant questioning and negotiation and is partly not fixed, but is constantly negotiated, I will use the notion self-organization in the following.
- 5.
Social movements direct their demands either to or against the state and/or government. The relationship between social movements and political opponents thus varies and is not always clearly defined. In this case study, RTC addresses the municipality.
- 6.
In contrast to notions such as “failed states” (cf. Schlichte, 2006), “weak” states are fundamentally stable, not threated in their existence and ensure a number of services and regulations (Pfeilschifter et al., 2020: 11). The limit of the state can be functional, temporal, or territorial (cf. Risse, 2011).
- 7.
- 8.
Black, white, and coloured are used as socially and politically constructed categories of discrimination and racism (for a debate on the use and meaning of the concept, see Vally & Motala, 2018).
- 9.
While the apartheid regime predominantly separated ethnic groups into black, white, and coloured, and Asians ethnic separation did not necessarily take place between black ethnic groups such as of the Zulu, Xhosa, Szwazi, or Ndebele amongst others.
- 10.
The evictions of District Six an area close to the city centre and the harbour is one of the prime examples of the racist apartheid clearings. The area was known as multi-ethnic and is close to the city centre and the port. The district was forcibly evicted and turned into a residential area for whites.
- 11.
In the year 2013, the sale price for property ranged from Rand 100,000 to Rand 300,000 (approx. 5600–16,700 euros) in Woodstock. By 2015, the average sale price was Rand 1.6 million (approx. 8900 euros, NU, 2017: 11).
- 12.
RTC occupied also buildings in Sea Point and in the City Centre.
- 13.
Zainunnisa “Cissie” Gool (1897–1963) was an anti-apartheid political and civil rights leader. In 1962 she was graduated in law as the first coloured women. As many occupants belong to the coloured community, Cissie Goal is a leading figure and idol who fought for the rights of the coloureds.
- 14.
All names have been changed in order to anonymize the persons.
- 15.
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Daniel, A. (2022). Enacting the Housing Crises Through Self-organization? The Cissie Gool Occupation of Reclaim the City and Its Ambivalent Relationship to the Capetonian Municipality (South Africa). In: Neubert, D., Lauth, HJ., Mohamad-Klotzbach, C. (eds) Local Self-Governance and Varieties of Statehood. Contributions to Political Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14996-2_4
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