Occupying Umlazi: Hesitant Steps Towards Political Ideology in a Durban Township

Abstract

Umlazi is considered the second most populated African township in South Africa, after Soweto. Located in southwestern Durban, Umlazi has long been a site of community movements, especially during apartheid. Umlazi's Ward 88 was a site of political revival in 2012, a time when ideas unified people and motivated them to pursue a common goal. The name of those ideas was ‘Occupy’, following a film screening of the 2011 Occupy movement. There are a variety of lessons from assessing several weeks of protest marred by state violence, followed by a Ward Committee election won by the Occupy movement, followed by uneven access to development resources. The ebb and flow of ideology is one such lesson: it is a necessary part of moving from local to global, to address both deep problems and the politicians who sustain them.

Funding

The background research for this project was financed by a grant from the Antipode Foundation, as well as by the opportunity to present in Jinju, Korea, at the Gyeongsang National University Institute for Social Science in June 2013, supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant (funded by the Korean Government: NRF-2013S1A5B8A01055117).