Research Outputs (Architecture and Planning)

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Accessing the State: Everyday Practices and Politics in the South
(Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2011) Benit Gbaffou, Claire
This special issue explores everyday practices and politics of accessing the state and state resources from a southern perspective. The collection of papers documents low-income residents’ everyday relationships with the state, through the study of actual practices of interaction with a range of state representatives at the local level (councilors and officials, at various levels of local government). Formal and informal, legal and illegal, confrontational and cooperative, we analyze the multiple tactics of engagement with the state by low-income residents to understand the extent to which they allow access to state resources and to degrees of state recognition, even in contexts of mass poverty, informality and scarce public resources. The modes of interaction with the state also embody and frame low-income residents’ representations of the state, of their expectations, and of their own citizenship. This special issue thus critically draws together a wide-ranging and important debate on governance, and the relationships it constructs between state and civil society. The main question we thus raise in this special issue is how the dynamics of governance reform, with attempted development or deepening of both decentralization and participation, affect everyday practices to access the state and the resulting politics that shape state-society relations in southern contexts. Collectively, the articles in the special issue reflect on the ways in which low-income citizens access to the state challenges existing theories of the state and democracy. Stemming from a research programme entitled ‘The Voices of the Poor in Urban Governance: Participation, Mobilisation and Politics in South African Cities’, this special issue focuses on South African cities primarily but not exclusively. Although the contexts examined have their own specificities, we argue that they provide an interesting and critical context in which to work through the debate from a Southern perspective. South African societies are specific in the huge expectations residents have in the post-apartheid state, and in the ways that ideals continue to be framed in modernist terms, as emblematized by policies of mass public housing delivery and effort towards mass access to urban services. The state, even if it is not so powerful, remains at the core of representations and expectations especially of lower income residents (Borges 2006) – mass urban protests which continue to rise in South African cities today show the disappointment of these expectations rather than a disregard, ignorance or avoidance of the State (Bénit-Gbaffou 2008, Alexander 2010). Attempts to address the gaps between expectation and public delivery have taken the form of major local government restructuring in a post-apartheid context, relying extensively on principles of good governance (decentralization, democratization as well as new public management principles). However, these expectations and experiences of confrontation of civil society with the state co-exist with everyday practices of negotiation, seeking of favours, and clientelism, which also shape residents’ access to resources, and more broadly their representations of the state and the construction of their urban citizenship (Oldfield and Stokke 2004). The South African case is thus particularly relevant to study the interaction between the modern state and good governance ideals, and practices of ‘political society’.
Community Policing and Disputed Norms for Local Social Control in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg
(Journal of Southern African Studies., 2008-03) Benit Gbaffou, Claire
This article, based on field study in suburbs and townships in post-apartheid Johannesburg, argues that there are different ‘cultures’ of policing and different conceptions of local social order embedded in different local histories and contrasting socio-economic settings. The South African state is currently attempting to homogenise security practices and to ‘educate’ people in a democratic policing culture. At the same time it is also firmly setting some limits (for instance by rejecting road closures and vigilantism) to the local security experiments developed in the period following the demise of apartheid. However, its current policy, supposedly designed to ‘unify’ the policing systems under common principles, is based on the broad encouragement of community participation in the production of security, as well as on the promotion of zero-tolerance principles. These policies actually serve to exacerbate local differentiation regarding the content and practice of policing as well as the undemocratic principles rhetorically resisted by the state.
Local Councillors: scapegoats for a dysfunctional participatory democratic system? Lessons from practices of local democracy in Johannesburg.
(Critical Dialogue: Public Participation in Review., 208) Benit Gbaffou, Claire
This paper starts with the study of participation patterns in different neighbourhoods in Johannesburg, and demonstrates that institutional channels (be it representative democracy, or various participatory institutions and instruments) are currently not working in Johannesburg. Be it in low income or high-income areas, suburbs or townships, residents have to resort to other means, sidelining in particular their ward councillor, to be heard. We question the reasons for this lack of bottomup dialogue, focusing on the figure of the ward councillor as a supposedly key link between residents and local government, but however not able to play his/her role. We contest the dominant vision that the failure of participatory democracy in South Africa is the consequence of a lack of training, education or democratic culture, and we argue that both the limited power of ward councillors in Council, and the lack of incentive for fostering their accountability in front of voters, make local democracy institutions dysfunctional. More broadly, we question the lack of importance of participatory democracy in the ANC and in the government agenda, despite the political discourses claiming the contrary.
Local democracy in Indian and South African cities: A comparative literature review
(Wits University Press, Johannesburg, 2011) Benit Gbaffou, Claire
The local level has become since the 1990s an important arena of development of democracy in most countries of the world – in a move sometimes described as part of “the third wave of democratization” (Huntington 1992), encouraged both by progressive movements seeking a form of grassroots democracy, and by the World Bank as a new form of governance. India and South Africa are no exception, and both countries have implemented reforms of local government in the mid 1990s, with the objective of broadening and deepening democracy. This chapter aims at comparing the political and academic debates that took place in South Africa and India concerning decentralization, and more broadly local democracy, in an urban context1. We believe, with Hantrais, that “the definition and understanding of concepts and the relationship between concepts and contexts are of critical concern in comparative research that crosses national, societal, cultural and linguistic boundaries” (Hantrais 2009: 72). Through a literature review and a contextualization of local democracy’s history, institutions, and practices, this joint chapter aims at identifying the commonalities and differences in the political and social stakes contained in the debates on “local democracy”.
Party politics, civil society and local democracy – Reflections from Johannesburg
(Geoforum, 2012) Benit Gbaffou, Claire
Party politics is generally absent from urban governance or urban politics theories or debates, or present only anecdotally or as a ‘black box’, whilst they are more and more described, especially in Cities of the South, as central to urban societies, access to resources and social dynamics. This paper attempts, through the case of the role of the ANC in civil society in Johannesburg, to uncover some of the place of political parties in urban governance. It first argues that the party local branch is often crucial as a platform of mobilization, expression and debates around local needs, being more structured and able to access channels of decision than other civil society organizations or local government participatory structures. However, its strong embededness in urban local societies also means a form of social control restricting the ability of civil society to revolt and challenge urban policies more radically.
The place of participation in South African local democracy. Editorial.
(Transformation, 2008) Benit Gbaffou, Claire
This collection of papers attempts to start bringing together these different approaches, relying on different methodologies and disciplines, in order to deepen our understanding of the interaction, at the local level, between social movements and the political system, understood as the power structures of local government, the electoral system and local party politics. In other terms, what are the relations between civic and social movements1 on the one hand, and local government structures and politics on the other hand? How does the latter shape political opportunity for social movements – and how does it set up constraints and limits to their development and action? How in return do social movements shape local government practices, and possibly policies – in other words, what is not only the nature, but more importantly the political outcome of social movements’ intervention in urban governance?
Policing Johannesburg wealthy neighborhoods: the uncertain ‘partnerships’ between police, communities and private security companies
(Trialog, 2006) Benit Gbaffou, Claire
The paper examines the challenges raised by “partnerships” between state and non-state security stakeholders, relying on two security experiments developed in Johannesburg wealthy neighborhoods. It raises the question of their monitoring by the police – understood as the police capacity to coordinate the multiple, non-state policing initiatives that otherwise remain fragmented “security networks”. The community initiatives seem easier to integrate within the local police strategies – since the private security sector has got its own, marketdriven logic. However, the formalisation of partnerships between police and communities have generally failed, due to their technical fragility (flexibility of community involvement, personalization of relationships leading to possible corruption and conflict) and their political difficulties (if the private sector can easily target the high income area, it is considered less legitimate for police to set up “elitist policing” thanks to the involvement of wealthy communities). Finally, abandoning these forms of partnerships might encourage a further privatization of the production of security – using more classical, easier-to-set “contracts” with the private sector that do not seem to lead to a real “partnership” with, nor a monitoring by, the police.
The researcher as the ball in a political game
(Carnets de géographes,, 2010-10) Benit Gbaffou, Claire
This research, undertaken by PLANACT (an NGO) and for which I am playing a role as research adviser, is about the place of residents’ participation in a hostel renovation projecti. The hostelii is located on former mining ground, close to the metropolitan fresh products market. It is not far from the city center in absolute terms (about 10 kilometers) and well connected to it through taxi routes: but in a no man’s land made up of industrial zones, mine dumps, and toxic waste. It is also a political enclave – an ANC stronghold in a DAiii ward, which mostly comprises (besides the hostel) former white working class suburbs. The hostel renovation is conducted by Joshco (Johannesburg Social Housing Company, an entity that is funded by the municipality and is accountable to it but has its own management structure), who also manages the rental units. The project is about converting a former male hostel (predominantly occupied by Xhosa residents, from the Eastern Cape) into family units, inviting the wife and children to join their long-gone husband. It is perceived by most residents as a radical change that has its own challenges (in particular when the migrant husband has established a relationship with another women; but even more generally because the coming of women challenges the former masculine environment and requires some reshuffling of traditional gender roles). In the process of conversion and renovation of the hostel, Joshco has been mainly interacting with the old Tenants Committee, composed of four men and often criticized by other stakeholders (including Joshco itself), for not being representative of all residents. Two other local organizations are powerful locally: the ANC and SANCO structures (partners in what is called the ‘Alliance Forum’) They are said to have a wider audience, and are extremely critical of (and sometimes violently oppositional to) Joshco’s project. It took a long time for us to identify who the leaders were and to organize a meeting, all the more that we were introduced in the hostel by Joshco’s caretaker, who was reluctant to put us in touch with people he perceived as ‘trouble makers’, and was also very wary that the research process could open conflict and even violence in City Deep Hostel, especially in electoral timesv. I had subsequently issued a poster and flyers in English and Xhosa to tell residents about the research and inform them that its purpose was to talk with all stakeholders and hear all voices, from an outsider’s, independent perspective. After several months of fieldwork in the area, and eventually individual interviews with the local ANC representative, and the SANCO chair, I asked the former if I could attend an Alliance Forum executive committee meeting (since there was no public meeting in the pipeline) and he invited me.
‘Up close and personal’ - How does local democracy help the poor access the state? Stories of accountability and clientelism in Johannesburg
(Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2011) Benit Gbaffou, Claire
The paper revisits participation and decentralization in relation to local clientelism, arguing that they share the personalization of links between residents and the State and the local possibility to adapt state policies. The line between decentralization-participation on the one hand, and clientelism on the other, is therefore easily blurred. The paper thus argues that clientelism is not per se anti-democratic, some forms allow for local and immediate accountability of politicians. However, in most cases, it contributes to fragment or sedate local organizations or social movements and it prevents contestation of existing policies and dominant power structures. The paper thus challenges the idea that the promotion of decentralization and participatory institutions intrinsically leads to more democratic forms of government.

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