Popular politics, social movements and the struggle for substantive citizenship in contemporary South Africa

Abstract

In this thesis, I present a political ethnography of popular protest in one of South Africa’s poor communities that was involved in a contentious confrontation with the state in demand of ‘self-government’ and political autonomy on several issues related to local governance and municipal administration. More broadly, the thesis is a study on how ordinary people in South Africa interact, engage, contest and bargain with institutions of power on everyday basis in demand of both moral and political recognition; basic services (such as water, electricity and housing); and also certain citizenship rights. This thesis therefore provides crucial insights into major issues lying at the heart of popular politics in contemporary South Africa. It grapples with the following research puzzle: why do ordinary South Africans continue to protest even when it is clear that their actions will not yield immediate results? Why do ordinary people still engage in protest even when the odds of tangible solutions to their day-to-day grievances and challenges are dim and slim?

In its attempt to examine the intersection(s) between popular politics, citizenship, and political subjectivity in contemporary South Africa, the thesis adopts a qualitative research design that is informed by Michael Burawoy’s key ideas on the ‘extended case method’. Data collection proceeded mainly through in-depth (ethnographic) interviewing and extended periods of participant observation. A content analysis of newspaper articles and other key documents was also employed as an ancillary method to ethnographic interviewing and participant observation.

The thesis argues that an adequate examination of the motivations of popular politics in contemporary South Africa has to go beyond a materialist paradigm of interest-based resource allocation (mobilisation) politics. It builds on existing research to argue for an approach to the analysis of popular politics that places both struggles of ‘redistribution’ and ‘moral recognition’ at the centre of sociological scrutiny. Rather than popular politics being only about responding to material inadequacies in the provision of basic services (water, electricity and housing for example), this thesis reveals also how the poor in South Africa engage in popular politics to highlight how the democratic project is failing to attend to moral questions. As part of its contribution, the thesis introduces a historical trope in the study and analysis of popular politics and community movement activities in South Africa that connects South Africa’s historical past to the present everyday realities of the poor. It is this ‘history’, the thesis argues, that frame contemporary struggles for the ordinary poor in South Africa. By introducing the idea of ‘political morality’, I argue in this thesis that the various incidences of popular politics in contemporary South Africa are indicative of a ‘crisis of normativity’. I coin this notion (crisis of normativity) to refer to the failures of conventional mechanisms and foundational norms of doing politics.