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 Periodical article |
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| Title: | Beyond legibility: violence, conflict and development in a South African township |
| Author: | Bähre, Erik |
| Year: | 2007 |
| Periodical: | African Studies |
| Volume: | 66 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Period: | April |
| Pages: | 79-102 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | informal settlements urban renewal local politics corruption urban development Law, Human Rights and Violence Urbanization and Migration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Development and Technology |
| External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/00020180701275956 |
| Abstract: | In order to understand the relative success or failure of development, one needs to go beyond legibility (James Scott, 1998) and examine development as an arena of contestation over scarce resources, ideological justifications and political security. The present case study of the transformation of the illegal squatter settlement of Indawo Yoxolo in Cape Town into a formal township under South Africa's Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) draws on the author's fieldwork in 1995 and reveals that, instead of the establishment of a more or less hegemonic power of the State over its citizens, State development led to fierce and violent conflicts in which mafia-style leaders, rivalling political factions, as well as protesting residents, tried to take charge of the development project. Policy is only one of the many factors of development. Even a national presidential development programme such as the RDP relies on the private sector. Concepts such as 'State power' or hegemony tend to overemphasize the level of State control and downplay national, provincial and local divisions. They also relegate forces that cannot be defined as resistance against the State outside the analysis of development and thereby fail to capture how conflict and violence are at the heart of development. Bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
