Urban Experiences ‘Beyond the West’: Comparing Cities in Southern African and BRIC Countries

Abstract

This article, which is based on a keynote speech for an urban panel at the Journal of Southern African Studies’ conference, ‘Southern Africa beyond the West’, compares urban experiences in the region of southern Africa with those in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Urban processes are complex and wide ranging, and comparative analysis necessarily must focus on specific aspects. The focus here is on cities as places where people live and work and on their welfare and livelihoods. The analysis emphasises the importance of accounting for different starting points and thus of historical factors, policy environments, changing modes of production and ideologies. A key argument is that the concept of path dependence – including the timing of key developmental phases, such as the attainment of independence in relation to global shifts in economic ideology – helps to explain some of the differences in development policies and their impacts on urban livelihoods. It is also argued that while contemporary comparative analysis has been facilitated by the increased hegemony of capitalism, a key influence on the welfare of urban populations in the different countries under consideration has been the very varied ways in which states have been able, and have chosen, to intervene in market-determined outcomes in cities in BRIC countries and in southern Africa.

Keywords:

• urbanisation
• de-industrialisation
• BRICS
• southern Africa
• comparative urbanism
• capitalism
• social grants

Acknowledgements

This article is a slightly edited version of the keynote speech for the urban panel at the Journal of Southern African Studies conference held in Livingstone, Zambia, 7–11 August 2015. The speech related to the conference title: ‘Southern Africa Beyond the West: Political, Economic and Cultural Relationships with BRICS Countries and the Global South’.

Notes

¹ J. Hanlon, Beggar Your Neighbours: Apartheid Power in Southern Africa (London, James Currey and the Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1986).

² See, for example, A.G. Frank, Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution (New York and London, Monthly Review Press, 1969).

³ M. Bradshaw and A. Stenning (eds), East and Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union: The Post-Socialist States (Harlow, Pearson, 2004); D. Stuckler, D. King and M. McKee, ‘Mass Privatisation and the Post-Communist Mortality Crisis: A Cross-National Analysis’, The Lancet, 373, 9661, (2009), pp. 399–407.

⁴ On the ideological battle over Zimbabwe’s urban-based economic policies in the 1980s, which the IFIs eventually won, see C. Stoneman, ‘The World Bank and the IMF in Zimbabwe’, in B. Campbell and J. Loxley (eds), Structural Adjustment in Africa (London, James Currey, 1989), and R. Riddell, ‘Zimbabwe’, in R. Riddell (ed.), Manufacturing Africa: Performance and Prospects of Seven Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (London and Portsmouth, James Currey and Heinemann, 1990). On these issues for sub-Saharan Africa generally, see R. Riddell, ‘The Future of the Manufacturing Sector in Sub-Saharan Africa’, in T.M. Callaghy and J. Ravenhill (eds), Hemmed In (New York, Columbia University Press, 1993); for the southern African region specifically, see C. Stoneman, ‘Structural Adjustment in Eastern and Southern Africa: The Tragedy of Development’, in D. Potts and T. Bowyer-Bower (eds), Eastern and Southern Africa: Development Challenges in a Volatile Region (Harlow, Pearson, 2004).

⁵ Among the many academics in southern Africa who do combine scholarly analysis with the promotion of social activism is Patrick Bond, previously the Director of the Centre for Civil Society, Durban, and now at the University of the Witwatersrand. He attended the conference where I presented the keynote speech upon which this article is based. Even as I spoke, he was emailing me to remind me of the importance of social activism and civil protest, which, he felt, I should have emphasised more in my speech.

⁶ Since this article was originally written, the UK has held a referendum over membership of the European Union, which ended in a vote to leave. This event and some of the political trends in the rest of Europe and the USA in 2016, including, notably, Donald Trump’s win in the US presidential election, are frequently argued to be expressions of the discontent of significant proportions of their populations with the outcomes of ‘globalisation’ for themselves. In turn, this has led to more recognition in public discourse in the global north that the costs and benefits of economic globalisation are experienced very unequally within societies there, as well as between them, and that this has political repercussions. As yet, however, it is rather rarer for explicit comparisons to be made between the fate of the urban global north and urban sub-Saharan Africa as the world’s economies and employment sectors have been reshaped by these forces. One exception, which is evident in the title of the book, is J. Comaroff and J.L. Comaroff, Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America is Evolving toward Africa (Boulder, Paradigm Publishers, 2012).

⁷ S. Parnell and J. Robinson, ‘(Re)Theorizing Cities from the Global South: Looking Beyond Neoliberalism’, Urban Geography, 33, 4 (2012), pp. 593–617.

⁸ Ibid., p. 593.

⁹ For example, D. Harvey, Social Justice and the City (Athens and London, University of Georgia Press, 1973); M. Castells, The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach, trans. Alan Sheridan (London, Edward Arnold, 1977); M. Castells, City, Class and Power (New York, St Martin’s Press, 1978).

¹⁰ Parnell and Robinson, ‘(Re)Theorizing Cities’, p. 601.

¹¹ A strong argument for ‘meaningful dialogue’ between structuralist and post-structuralist approaches to African urban studies, for improved understandings of contemporary African urban realities, is made in a recent intervention by David Simon, with particular reference to environmental issues. See D. Simon, ‘Uncertain Times, Contested Resources: Discursive Practices and Lived Realities in African Urban Environments’, City, 19, 2–3 (2015), pp. 216–38.

¹² Carmody made this point in his own keynote speech at the JSAS conference in 2015; see P. Carmody, ‘The Geopolitics and Economics of BRICS’ Resource and Market Access in Southern Africa: Aiding Development or Creating Dependency?, elsewhere in this issue.

¹³ Of course, this is an irony only for those who believe that leaving economic changes to the vagaries of unmitigated market forces is the best way forward.

¹⁴ This term, as currently used in urban studies, is usually traced to the original work of H. Lefebvre, Le Droit À La Ville (Paris, Anthropos [2nd edn], 1968) and, in his words, refers to a ‘demand … [for] a transformed and renewed access to urban life’. It relates to all and any urban residents and thus goes far beyond the long-standing (and, in context, understandable) preoccupation of southern Africanist scholars with migrants’ rights to cities. The concept is sometimes used by urban popular movements, including Abahlali baseMjondolo, South Africa’s shack-dweller movement. It was written into Brazilian federal law under the City Statute law of 2001, and also into the New Urban Agenda adopted by world leaders at Habitat III in October 2016.

¹⁵ For example, D. Potts, ‘“'Shall We Go Home?” Increasing Urban Poverty in African Cities and Migration Processes’, Geographical Journal, 161, 3 (1995), pp. 245–64; D. Potts, Circular Migration in Zimbabwe and Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa (Oxford, James Currey, 2010).

¹⁶ D. Potts, ‘The Slowing of Sub-Saharan Africa’s Urbanization: Evidence and Implications for Urban Livelihoods’, Environment and Urbanization, 21, 1 (2009), pp. 253–9.

¹⁷ See, for example, T.M. Mitrakos, ‘Inequality, Poverty and Social Welfare in Greece: Distributional Effects of Austerity’, Hellenic Studies, 22, 1 (2014), pp. 65–94; M. Gkartzios, ‘“Leaving Athens”: Narratives of Counterurbanisation in Times of Crisis’, Journal of Rural Studies, 32 (2013), pp. 158–67.

¹⁸ This is also true of Lesotho, but the pensions are only for those over 70, which limits their effectiveness.

¹⁹ S. Devereux, ‘Social Pensions in Southern Africa in the Twentieth Century’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 33, 3 (2007), pp. 539–60; J. Ferguson, Give a Man a Fish: Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution (Durham, Duke University Press, 2015); S. Levine, B. Roberts, J. May, H. Bhorat, J-Y. Duclos, E. Thorbecke and A. Araar, A Review of Poverty and Inequality in Namibia (Windhoek, Namibian Central Bureau of Statistics and National Planning Commission, 2009).

²⁰ See Africa Check, Factsheet: ‘Social Grants in South Africa – Separating Myth From Reality’ (2015), available at https://africacheck.org/factsheets/separating-myth-from-reality-a-guide-to-social-grants-in-south-africa/, retrieved 4 July 2015.

²¹ Ibid.

²² A. Cassim and H. Bhorat, ‘South Africa’s Welfare Success Story II: Poverty-Reducing Social Grants’, Africa in Focus, 27 January 2014 (Washington DC, Brookings Institution), available at https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2014/01/27/south-africas-welfare-success-story-ii-poverty-reducing-social-grants/, retrieved 23 May 2017.

²³ See, for example, the analysis in A. Goebel, ‘“Our Struggle Is for the Full Loaf”: Protests, Social Welfare and Gendered Citizenship in South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 37, 2 (2011), pp. 369–88.

²⁴ Data cited in publicity for a meeting in February 2012 on South African manufacturing, which also noted that the sector was ‘struggling to compete against lesser cost and at times more agile competitors … [and it posed the question] can South Africa compete against Asia?’ (Africa Frontiers Forum, publicity flyer for seminar, ‘Will Special Economic Zones rescue manufacturing in South African and the region?’, Johannesburg Stock Exchange, 29 February 2012).

²⁵ These are named after the reconstruction and development programme, which ran for two years after 1994; this was then replaced by the much more market-oriented growth, employment and redistribution (GEAR) programme.

²⁶ L. Donnelly, ‘State to Tackle Housing Title Deed Mess’, Mail and Guardian, 1 August 2014, available at http://mg.co.za/article/2014-07-31-state-to-tackle-housing-title-deed-mess/, retrieved 23 May 2017.

²⁷ See M.Z. Phiri, ‘Comparative Perspectives on South Africa’s and Brazil’s Institutional Inequalities under Progressive Social Policies’, elsewhere in this issue.

²⁸ See, for example, M.K. Pati, ‘How Secure Is India’s National Food Security Act?’ 28 September 2015 (Bengaluru, Institute of Public Health, 2015), available at http://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/blog/2015/09/how-secure-is-indias-national-food-security-act/, retrieved 4 July 2016.

²⁹ This is not to say that the societies of the global south opposed further trade liberalisation at this round. However, continued protectionism on the part of societies of the global north, of their agricultural markets in particular, was a major stumbling block.

³⁰ For example, ‘Bailing Out from Bali: World Trade’, The Economist, 9 August 2014, p. 58; S. Donnan and A. Kazmin, ‘Indian Objections Sink WTO Deal’, Financial Times, 31 July 2014.

³¹ See, for example, T. Miller, China’s Urban Billion: The Story Behind the Biggest Migration in Human History (London, Zed Books, 2012).

³² See A. White, ‘Internal Migration Trends in Soviet and Post-Soviet European Russia’, Europe–Asia Studies, 59, 6 (2007), pp. 887–911.

³³ A recent exception is work by Warren Smit of the African Centre for Cities, Cape Town. See China–South Africa Urban Studies Workshop, ‘Starting from the South’, report-back on meeting, Cape Town, 25–27 March 2015 (Cape Town, 2016), available at http://www.urbanstudiesfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Starting-from-the-South-Report-forWebsite.pdf, retrieved 6 March 2017.

³⁴ N. Hedley, ‘Tongaat’s Sugar Business Not as Sweet as its Property Development Operation’, Business Day, 5 November 2013.

³⁵ G. Myers, African Cities: Alternative Visions of Urban Theory and Practice (London, Zed Books, 2011).