This week South Africans’ have felt many things - fear, anger, exhaustion, disgust, care, hope. It was a week of planned insurrection, a week of visible fractures and inequality, a week of 1 million vaccine registrations, a week of (for the large part) restored calm and commenced cleanups.
Urban management and placemaking
New beginnings for the sites that have been most harmed - where buildings can’t immediately be rebuilt, factories replenished, tenants re-found and shelves restocked.
If urban management in and around these sites is not immediately instituted, deterioration of these environments will set in. Although I support Ramaphosa’s call for sustained civic duty, volunteerism as seen in the immediate clean-up campaigns will only last so long unless given a structure within which to operate.
Stakeholders for these areas are faced with a choice: a hyper-securitised approach that signals further exclusion and centralises fear of future uprisings (fences, guards, CCTV); or a life-giving approach, that signals expansion of ownership and centralises transformation (traders, landscaping, outdoor events, etc).
Choosing the latter, means creating social enterprises out of sustained urban management (cleaning and security), place-keeping and place-making (beautification, cultural expression, new forms of trading to create edges that aren’t fences) and will require a resourced approach, with property-owners, EPWP, youth clusters, brand activations (if you can’t yet be on the shelf, what else can you do?), etc. all engaged.
I face so much resistance to meaningful stakeholder engagement in my work with City governments. If this week has taught us anything, it should be trusting that the people can do it. Yes, the scenes of destruction and desperation where disruptive. But overwhelmingly, the story is one of people coming together across communities to say we will stay calm, we will protect, we will care, we will clean up, we will recover.
Neighbourhoods that have been blockaded
Practical steps for making these temporary, and safe for all
Contradictionary defines a gated community as “To remain stable, oppressive structures must confine the natural inclination human beings feel towards sympathy and generosity to carefully delineated spaces”.
The booms, blockades etc. that have gone up over night can either be the force that accelerates an existing trend of privatising neighbourhoods, or temporary measures attached to clear markers and exit strategies. The long-game of the former results in the tales of two-cities playing out to their logical conclusions - self-contained and self-servicing enclaves of the rich operating even as mini-municipalities, with the rest of society existing in financially and socially unsustainable slums. Some would say we’ve already allowed this to happen.
If we are to avoid (furthering) that, and ensure democratization, access and fixing our broken cities, we need clear timelines, and enforcement there of, for close-out so that this isn’t an acceleration of privatisation of public neighbourhoods, racial profiling of street access, and securitization of parks, etc.
Empowering men with weapons or an expanded sense of power does not make every resident feel safe. Even those in an official uniform. This is South Africa. Women, people of colour, queer people are not safe. Who are you empowering in the name of protecting property? (And don’t @ me that these aren’t the men who turn on women).
Similarly, given South Africa’s history, driving up to one of these blockades and being asked for identification could bring up trauma’s of the past.
This needs to involve ward councilors, SAPS and existing security companies. All political parties need to sign up to this - none should use the notion of privately securitised and access controlled neighbourhoods as a 2021 election ticket.
A very practical, immediate step for all of these blockades would be to sign up to operating principles with the local CPF and community. As a default these should include non-racialism. Having printed posters up that are visible to all that clearly state:
principles of operation (including non-racialism)
intended duration of operation or markers for when it will be safe to re-open the area
information about nearby shops and medical services
contact number of local police head for complaints / recourse
Info-toxicity
Tragedy of the mental commons - reclaiming communication
Contradictionary defines the information age as “information everywhere, communication nowhere”. We live in an era of moving from one jolting story to the next, so much noise around us. While there is “good” investigative journalism, there is often far more stimulating media hyping up parts of stories that will earn them clicks, selling certain political narratives, publishing press releases as truth. Add to this misinformation, and fake news, and what Kevin Arnold calls “the tragedy of the mental commons” - the constant fight for our mental attention, reducing our ability to dedicate time to communicate, to clarify, to find common ground or reach agreement.
We can ignore the threat to democratic process that this potentially possesses, or we can invest in organisations that are combatting disinformation, and include in the curriculum of schools better media, critical thinking and debate skills.
Race relations
Rainbows are formed when sunlight is scattered from raindrops into the eyes of an observer. Not painted over old wounds.
We can’t ignore that there were racial tensions in certain communities and online. Existing racial fractures will have worsened in some areas. And not only in the directly affected Cities. Among those watching, too, there was confirmation-bias galore.
Some will choose to go deeper into the alt-right, and in fact most will not unlearn racism unless facilitated. Even proximity to other races is not enough - because of confirmation-bias, our brains will trick us into subconsciously finding proof of our inner biases, and making inferences about intentions and actions, before we’ve even analysed or thought about them. And we know many people aren’t even at the level of proximity yet - still living in “bubbles” - sending their kids to lilly-white (or Indian) pre-schools, and asking “nobly” “how will I teach Johnny not to be a racist?”.
We can choose unlearning, and connection. This is a shift at an individual level as much as at a structural level. That’s why I say, every political party should be campaigning (genuinely, not opportunistically) with a programme related to racial integration in the 2021 local elections - but it’s not just up to them, it’s up to all of us. Its 2021, there are plenty of resources on how to work on your own internal prejudices, we must demand it of our schools and workspaces, not tolerate it in our public spaces, and be better at sharing spaces.
It’s the economy, stupid
Co-opting the economy
A fair amount of the supply chains are already back up and running (with gleeful videos of trucks making it back to port, and break back on some shelves), while other projects will take long to reconstruct. Some small businesses will not make it back, even some factories may liquidate.
The reason so many people were able to get caught up in the looting activity was inequality and poverty, and lack of hope or sense of ownership over any near-term solution for the future. This SAHRC report on Alexandra even warned us of the total detachment from services, government, law enforcement, economy - creating a “ticking time bomb”.
We can choose to count our lucky stars that unrest was contained to KZN and Gauteng and carry on life as normal in the rest of the country, and rebuild there with the same economic principles, continue with slow or no economic reform.
Or, we can start to listen to the impatience of those who call for transformation, who say “this is unsustainable”, who muddy neat policy programmes or projects by asking about inclusion, or alternative economic outcomes, and that damn land and spatial transformation question.
The notion that everything is contained is tantalizing - a commission can be set up, and bureaucratic fiefdoms can continue to deliver in their pet modes of existence.
Yes I’ve been a voice saying “this is unsustainable”. But I’ve also had a sense that we are on the cusp of something different. For the first time ever, when I turn on the radio or TV, or walk into a bookstore, I hear and see black professionals delivering expert opinion, leading industry processes, innovating, launching and unashamedly taking others with them. (I don’t see enough of this in government, but the state of our state is clear to all of us). I feel like this generation of leaders might finally be getting to a tipping point where that new model is inevitable - the decision makers have finally changed.
In my recent reflection on the unrest, I provided some ideas on recovery - I wrote about the introduction of a basic income grant as both an urgent welfare response, but also introduction of spending power with multiplier effects. Continuing to address the impacts of state capture on our state performance and capabilities, getting township development right, localisation of procurement (I think companies also need to get real about supplier development).
I’d add that we need to get real about addressing monopolies in retail and the impact this has on food prices and leakage from local economies, as well as opportunities for mom-and-pop stores - the lifeblood of urban economies and vibrant streets in cities around the world. This can be addressed at both a macro level (competition policy) as well as through town planning and design guidelines (fine grain active streets planning, not strip malls).
There’s so much more to said on this topic - it involves fiscal policy, transport policy, land and housing and gender in everything from policy to the workplace and the home. Are you braced for change?
I’d encourage readers to also check out New Frame’s New Economy series.
*SCM must be a big target for transformation
*THRREAFTER, do away with as much 'fast-food' buying and replace with 'local vendor' buying (where possible)
*Using the 'Spinach King' 'startup model', guarantee the purchase of all 'excess'/non-sold produce.
Great to see the CAN network working.
Have you seen reviews of the book written by Cormac Russell 'Rekindling Democracy'