Waiting for the state: a politics of housing in South Africa

Abstract

Although specified in the South African Bill of Rights, for the majority of South African citizens the right to access housing translates in practice to the experience of waiting. In this paper we reflect on the micropolitics of waiting, practices of quiet encroachment, exploring how and where citizens wait and make do, and their encounters with the state in these processes. We argue that waiting for homes shapes a politics of finding shelter in the meanwhile partially visible yet precarious, the grey spaces of informality and illegality that constitute South African cities. At the same time, waiting generates a politics of encounter between citizen and state, practices immersed in shifting policy approaches and techniques, the contingent and often-opaque practices of governance. In sum, the politics of waiting for housing in South Africa proves paradoxical: citizens are marked as legitimate wards of the state. Yet, to live in the meanwhile and in the long term requires subversion, an agency that is sometimes visible in mobilisation and protest, and at other times out of sight, simultaneously contentious and legitimate.

A Decent House, a Decent Job, a Decent Life: Social Reproduction Theory and Working Class Organizing in Cape Town.

“…While patronage is a glaring feature of South Africa politics with parties vying for support particularly around election time (a disruptive and fragmenting force beyond the scope of this paper) the apparatus of the local state has also played a role in exacerbating tensions and divisions, particularly along racial and ethnic lines and especially in the poor management of public services post-1994post- (McDonald 2008. In efforts to amalgamate several waiting lists and apply a non-racial housing policy to a society stratified by apartheid, a process of housing allocation and service delivery has emerged which appears to favor some over others, lacking the impartiality with it was originally conceived (Levenson 2017;Oldfield and Greyling 2015). This is the case whether intentional-the common perception-or merely a circumstance of the competitive process of housing allocation in the context of budgetary constraints, private sector dependent delivery mechanisms and demand that vastly exceeds supply.…”

Refugees’ Access to Housing and Residency in German Cities: Internal Border Regimes and Their Local Variations

“…In the following section, we will discuss regulations on the German federal level that grant and restrict access to the right to housing and the right of free movement and settlement. These regulations exemplify the status of refugees as a specific category of migrants who are deliberately being held in unique situations of "waiting for the state" (Oldfield & Greyling, 2015) by placing them in extended border zones manifested in both spatial and temporal dimensions.…”

“…In our analysis, we identify several layers of internal border regulations that create barriers and access to individual housing, which notably differ across federal states and municipalities. The length of time that refugees are kept waiting (Oldfield & Greyling, 2015) in regard to housing thus depends, among other things, on the state and municipality to which they are allocated.…”

“For Now, We Are in Waiting”: Negotiating Time in Chile's Social Housing System

“…Following Bourdieu's () insistence that time plays a constitutive role in the exercise of power, temporal analyses of social provision suggest that waiting is an integral aspect of emergent state strategies for managing marginalized groups, and produces distinct sociopolitical effects (Auyero ; Reid ). Waiting can mark those who rely on public assistance as degraded subjects through routine devaluation of their time (Schwartz ); impose costs and insecurity (Reid ); and shape citizens’ expectations and practices of claiming social rights (Auyero ; Oldfield and Greyling ). Scholars diverge, however, on precisely how waiting operates and the specific effects it produces in everyday state–citizen relations.…”

“…Although developed to analyze the temporal effects of mass unemployment in India (Jeffrey and Young ), adapting this approach to the study of social provision elucidates how waiting can elicit practices that exceed, and even challenge, dominant state projects. In this vein, Oldfield and Greyling's () study of housing in South Africa shows how the chronic failure of the postapartheid state to provide homes for the poor led neither to abandonment of rights‐claims nor passive submission. Instead, homeless city‐dwellers continued to register on official waiting lists for housing even as they employed practices of illegal squatting.…”