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Working Paper No.49
The Legacies of Apartheid and Implications of Economic
Liberalisation
Sarah Mosoetsa
Sociology of Work Unit, University of the Witwatersrand
July 2004
This paper is concerned with organisational responses of
residents in one low-income urban community located in the Province of KwaZulu-Natal.
The area concerned is Mpumalanga Township near Durban, and it is an area that
has had a difficult history of political violence.
This has meant that, despite a coterminous history of trade union militancy and
high levels of community mobilisation, social networks have been severely
fractured. Firstly, this paper explores the tenuous process of rebuilding
community level trust and collective action in the wake of political transition.
A process of democratic consolidation has been made more difficult by economic
recession and workplace restructuring. The general lack of trust in politicians
and popular representatives in the contemporary period has meant that people are
retreating into families and kinship networks, a response reinforced by poverty.
In contrast to previous modes of trade union organisation in the area, problems
of poverty and efforts towards enhancing livelihood opportunities are treated as
private issues.
Thus poverty and suspicion undermine community engagement and limit collective
action responses to widespread problems. Secondly, the family is seen as a site
of stability, but this is only realisable if the institution is supported by
government policy. State transfers, such as pensions and child maintenance
grants, are critical to relieving the enormous pressures and demands made upon
the household. The argument advanced here is that it is on the stability of
families, and particularly of older women within them, that the production of
future citizens rests. However, due to the enormous burden placed on family
networks and unequal power relations within households, the stability of family
networks is seriously undermined. A crisis of reproduction surfaces as incidence
of alcohol and drug abuse and domestic violence become common features of most
households. Thirdly, the crisis of representation has informed the emergence of
alternative forms of community organisation. The link between household survival
and urban services has also given rise to popular responses so that engagement
with metropolitan government becomes another site of emerging citizenship.
Finally, the consolidation of democracy is emerging out of conflict as citizens
demand accountability from politicians. It is argued that this constitutes a
potential faultline in the process of democratic consolidation.
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