Unemployment, service delivery and practices of waiting in South Africa’s informal settlements

Mujere, Joseph

doi:10.1080/21681392.2019.1697312

Cited by 22 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Most of these people were poor and they lacked access and opportunities to fulfil their basic needs; necessities were unaffordable. Vandalism as theft to earn an income could be a mitigating strategy by these people to survive the frustrations of poverty (Ikejemba & Schuur, 2018;Mujere, 2019). Therefore, vandalism and the presence of scrap metal enterprises in the area could serve as bait for young people to become involved in this behaviour, especially if they are unemployed and out of school.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors with significance on vandalism of on-farm infrastructure at the Musekwa Valley, Vhembe District of Limpopo Province, South Africa

Mafukata,

Moseki,

Khan

2024

IJRBS

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In some parts of the Vhembe District in Limpopo Province of South Africa, vandalism is becoming a serious problem, and solutions are not easy to find. Vandalism has had a variety of negative impacts on livestock farmers. A few studies have studied the concept of vandalism, but studies employing empirical models to determine the factors that are of significance to vandalism are conspicuously rare, if not absent. This paper investigated factors of significance to on-farm infrastructural vandalism in the Musekwa Valley of the Vhembe District, Limpopo Province. The study used a mixed method approach and collected data using a cross-cultural semi structured questionnaire instrument translated from English into the native Tshivenda. Data were collected from fifty-five (n=55) purposively selected primary participants who were interviewed using face to face approach. Additional data were collected through key informant interviews administered on purposively selected key informants (n = 4), focus group discussions were done, and transect walks were employed for observation purposes. A binary logistic regression model was fitted to the data, and the following factors emerged as significant to vandalism: age, gender, education level, ownership of cattle, exposure to information, household expenditure, and reporting of incidents of vandalism to authorities. It is recommended that a community-based approach is adopted to find solutions to the problem of vandalism, to avoid a top-down approach that residents might undermine.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors with significance on vandalism of on-farm infrastructure at the Musekwa Valley, Vhembe District of Limpopo Province, South Africa

Mafukata,

Moseki,

Khan

2024

IJRBS

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“…The Lephalale Unemployment Forum was formed in response to the precarious waiting in time and space experienced by many in Lephalale. Waiting can come at 'social and personal costs', but can also be generative of action (Mujere 2020;Schwartz 1975;Stasik, Hänsch & Mains 2020). The Forum, comprised of disgruntled ANC, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and Democratic Alliance (DA) members, was not aligned to any political party.…”

Section: The Lephalale Unemployment Forum and The Struggle For Waged ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Youth activist paradoxes in the urban periphery of Lephalale: The struggle for employment and climate justice in a coal-rich region of South Africa

Luckett¹

2022

Gateways

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Southern Africa is understood to be a climate change hotspot, with youth and children most likely to be affected. The region has already suffered climate variability, with increased occurrence of floods and droughts, which are expected to escalate in the future. Despite the fact that young people in the region are central to ecological and social justice debates, they are often depicted as uninterested and excluded from policy and decision- making spaces – especially those living in global and urban peripheries. In this article, I speak to the nexus of youth, social and environmental justice, and climate politics. I do so by unpacking the everyday concerns and negotiations of youth activists in the urban periphery of Lephalale in Limpopo, South Africa – not typically seen as an urban centre or a site of youth politics. Lephalale is viewed as a future hub of power generation in South Africa, the rapid growth of the town being based on the expansion of coal extractivism. The complexities and paradoxes around how youth are navigating their futures in this site of mega coal projects are explored through two case studies: the Lephalale Unemployment Forum and the Waterberg Environmental Justice Forum. With climate and environmental catastrophe producing both shrinking futures and horizons of possibility, I argue that youth contestation and negotiation of their futures hold out possibilities, even with their contradictions, for collective reimagining of urban space and development. Through the methodology I employed to explore these negotiations and contestations, I aimed to be cognisant of how research is embedded in context-specific power-laden social relations. While it was not explicitly collaborative research, what emerged from the process was the importance of slow, informal relationship-building before, during and after the research, which would be the basis for a collaborative research project years later. This way of conducting slow research is particularly necessary for engagement across racial, cultural and class divisions, as well as for research that traverses the boundary between academia and social movements in this time of crisis.

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“…For young men, Ituura is a place of what anthropologists have described as a form of 'waithood' (Honwana 2012;cf. Hansen 2005;Mains 2012;Masquelier 2019;Jones 2020;Stasik et al 2020;Mujere 2020), itself produced by the continent's wider problem of 'surplus people', of mass underemployment and unemployment (Li 2010). But Ituura's landscape of waithood borders on sites of genuine prosperitythe satellite town of Chungwa, where Lee had moved, and especially nearby Ruaka, a new type of urban setting that has emerged in the last two decades as a desirable place to live for middle-class Nairobians.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ironies of accomplishment: negative aspiration, economic resentment and the myth of the middle class on Nairobi’s new urban outskirts

Lockwood

2023

Africa

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Exploring the ‘hollow’ character of middle-class status in contemporary Kenya, this article shows how upwardly mobile young Kenyans struggle to cope with the expectations for distribution that their displays of achievement create. Focusing on the urbanizing peripheries of Nairobi, it shows how accusations of envy (wivu) made about poorer friends and relatives reflect their anxieties about failing to act as the providers they are expected to be. Anticipation of the disappointment and resentment of their would-be dependants encourages them to withdraw from friendships and kinship relations in their home neighbourhoods, and seek instead an impersonal life in new urban enclaves closer to Nairobi. The avoidance of obligation is justified through discourses of individual effort and achievement, while poorer peers and relations are criticized for looking to rely on others. The article shows how such tensions over obligation and desires for withdrawal illuminate the fragility of Kenya’s emerging middle class and the ‘ironies of accomplishment’ – that their very precarity denies these Kenyans the respect and status they desire in their neighbourhood homes.

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Unemployment, service delivery and practices of waiting in South Africa’s informal settlements

Cited by 22 publications

References 23 publications

Factors with significance on vandalism of on-farm infrastructure at the Musekwa Valley, Vhembe District of Limpopo Province, South Africa

Factors with significance on vandalism of on-farm infrastructure at the Musekwa Valley, Vhembe District of Limpopo Province, South Africa

Youth activist paradoxes in the urban periphery of Lephalale: The struggle for employment and climate justice in a coal-rich region of South Africa

Ironies of accomplishment: negative aspiration, economic resentment and the myth of the middle class on Nairobi’s new urban outskirts

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