Invoking Lefebvre's ‘right to the city’ in South Africa today: A response to Walsh

Abstract

In South Africa, the shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo in Durban invokes a Lefebvrian notion of the right to the city while embarking on rights-based action as one of several approaches it employs. In a recent City article, Shannon Walsh frames the use of the right to the city by social movements in South Africa as having liberalizing and neutralizing effects, and as subverting the social antagonisms inherent in capitalism. This paper responds to this assertion with reference to Abahlali baseMjondolo, the movement that in South Africa is most vocal and reflected in referring to a right to the city in its urban struggles. The paper explains Abahlali baseMjondolo's philosophy as well as the context in which it invokes a right to the city. Drawing on scholars who have explored Lefebvre's use of liberal notions (humanism and rights), the relevance of his right to the city in the context of urban neoliberalism and the purposes of invoking the right to the city, the paper aims to present positions that may strengthen the discourse on the right to the city in South Africa and similar contexts of urban extremes across the globe.

Key words:

• right to the city
• South Africa
• Abahlali baseMjondolo
• slum eradication
• liberalism
• humanism
• socio-economic rights
• neoliberalism

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Christoph Haferburg, Chloe Buire and Richard Pithouse for insightful comments on the draft of this paper.

Notes

1 In South Africa there is real tension between ‘those who think that a vanguard of middle class intellectuals should rule movements with a focus on “big issues” and those that feel that movements should be under popular control, rooted within people's everyday lives and struggles’ (R. Pithouse, personal communication, 10 September 2013).

Additional information

Marie Huchzermeyer is Professor in the School of Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand.