On Militancy, Self-reflection, and the Role of the Researcher

ABSTRACT

This paper began in response to Ibrahim Steyn's work on Abahlali baseMjondolo Western Cape, (AbM-WC) – a Cape Town-based social movement I was involved with for a few years. An initial desire for clarity evolved into a self-reflective investigation into my own work with the movement's base community, QQ-Section. Throughout the paper, I problematise certain contradictions in my involvement thereby taking Steyn's work and the call for critical research seriously. This led me to re-evaluate my praxis, giving me the opportunity to question methodologies of social movement researchers. To account for the problematic role the investigator plays, I propose alternative militant, thorough, and self-critical ways of conducting research.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the residents of QQ Section for welcoming me into their community and for teaching me a thing or two about the slow and painstaking nature of collective democracy. A special thank you to Theliwe Macekiswana for her time and intricate knowledge of the history of AbM-WC. I would also like to thank three anonymous friends and colleagues who reviewed drafts of this piece. I did not receive funding for the research and writing of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential financial conflict of interest was reported by the author. However, the author engages in self-reflection with regards to the conflicts inherent in his personal and professional relationships with other subjects in the text.

ORCID

Jared Sacks http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9534-5869

Notes

1 ‘Subject’ refers to a person about whom an investigator conducts research, rather than philosophically in terms of subjectivity. As a privileged subject of Steyn's research, I was able to access his journal article while his AbM-WC subjects could not. To address this, I printed article and thesis to shared with them. Still, language and literacy restrictions prevented most members from engaging with its contents beyond the verbal explanation I provided. I.e. there is no equivalence between my position and Steyn's other subjects.

2 ‘They’, ‘their’, ‘them’, are also used in the singular as gender neutral pronouns.

3 My focus is AbM-WC. There is no space in this paper, nor the ethnographic knowledge, to respond to Steyn's assertions regarding other movements. Procedurally, I avoid conflating AbM-WC with AbM-KZN: distinct organisations with different philosophies and operational structures.

4 Not all shack settlements are founded like this.

5 Note: whereas council flats and bond home communities organise around shared issues such as evictions excluding many less precarious residents, in shack settlements, all residents become implicated in developmental issues. Still, shack settlements are often divided by political affiliation.

6 This has nuance because of a global resurgence of anti-Semitism.

7 One can distinguish Colectivo Situaciones from other academics engaging in reflexive, activist ethnography (Burawoy 2013; Scheper-Hughes 1995) as Colectivo position themselves primarily as militants immersed in movement struggles; their research tends not to serve an academic function. Rather than publishing in academic journals, Colectivo shares its research with movements (LatinAmericaBureau 2010).

8 I helped found CHOSA in 2005. After reflection, we decided to restructure the organisation to operate horizontally and democratically without a boss. Space restrictions limit further extrapolation.

9 Methodological questions developed later.

10 See also the pioneering method of radical co-authorship (Nagar 2014; Sangtin and Nagar 2006) and collaborative research by the Publica[c]tion Collective (2017).

11 Unfortunately, the other key outsider involved with AbM-WC, Martin Legassick, is since deceased. Despite his shortcomings, I believe he also would have engaged critically with these questions.

12 Many individual residents still voted ANC. But, unlike most other shack settlements in Khayelitsha, the party had no organisational presence in QQ-Section.

13 There were no Somali-owned shops in QQ-Section, though, possibly, some residents of QQ-Section participated in attacks inside Q-Section,

14 Poni did help inculcate a strong, deliberative democratic culture in QQ-Section after disaffiliating from SANCO and before AbM-WC’s 2008 launch. Until about 2009, deliberative zone meetings representing sub-sections of about 100 households would precede each community-wide meeting.

15 Martin Legassick’s (2009) unpublished work, two articles by Steven Robins in 2014 and 2015) focused on the Social Justice Coalition (not AbM-WC) and a short blog post by Matt Birkinshaw (2008).

16 True, I have written about other communities and movements like the Marikana Land Occupation (Cape Town) and AbM-KZN and have now taken on a new role pursuing a PhD. If deemed inaccurate/romantic, my writing should be critiqued in relation to those organizations rather than AbM-WC – Perhaps a future self-reflective paper may be needed here.

17 Podlashuc was forced to retract some claims after the SDI leadership and a top political figure threatened to sue.

18 Ivy Mbotshelwa makes this claim to Steyn (2015, 149). Being hearsay, I would hesitate to give it credibility without concrete evidence.

19 See SDI and SAHPF.

20 Though her role paralleled mine, the involvement of my colleague, Zukie Mabuya, was erased in Steyn's thesis.

21 I do not idealize this. Just because auto-critique occurs within movements does not mean this process is necessarily sufficient, democratic, or progressive.