THE POLITICS OF SURPLUS PEOPLE

Squatting has a long history in South Africa, and is inseparable from the spatial strategies of rule and segregation that were initiated in the colonial period and found their most extreme expression in the apartheid era. This process saw the consolidation of a racially stratified South Africa featuring a national territory for ‘white’ citizens, together with a topography of ‘black’ spaces: impoverished and deliberately underdeveloped reserves called ‘homelands' or ‘bantustans', and a disjointed geography of townships to house ‘black’ workers near the ‘white’ cities.Footnote ² Together, these operated as a nexus (Eidelberg Reference Eidelberg1997) that, on the one hand, restricted ‘black’ urbanization and the social and political challenges it embodied for the racist state (Maylam Reference Maylam1995: 33; Posel Reference Posel1991) and, on the other, secured cheap and docile labour for the state's economic utility (Amin cited in Arrighi et al. Reference Arrighi, Aschoff and Scully2010: 412; Makhulu Reference Makhulu2010). To further the interests of this assemblage of territory and racial power, a convoluted range of influx controls was set up, notably the use of permits limiting access and time in the city, and corresponding policing. Limits on township housing, and the use of permanent residence rights to stabilize a kind of urban elite, gave rise to distinct classes of permanent and transient urban ‘black’ residents – equally deprived of political rights, but stratified in their freedoms and capacities in the city. Migrant urbanites were forced to reside singly in barracks-style hostels or as lodgers, subject to a ‘policy of temporariness' (Gelderblom and Kok Reference Gelderblom and Kok1994: 90) and rendered ‘surplus' and returned to the reserves as soon as their employment ended (Platzky and Walker Reference Platzky and Walker1985: 163). Permanent residents could live with their families in rented township houses and were entitled to remain in the city regardless of whether they were ‘“surplus” to white needs' (Posel Reference Posel1991: 82–3).

But since the homelands could not employ or otherwise sustain all of their inhabitants, ‘surplus' people made their way back to ‘white’ cities illegally wherever possible, despite influx controls (Platzky and Walker Reference Platzky and Walker1985: 163). Ultimately, the state's control measures could not contain the flow of ‘surplus' people, whose subjection ironically turned to agency as they established squatter settlements that defied the state's biopolitical tools – and faced repressive measures as a result (Makhulu Reference Makhulu2010). However, even under the state of emergency that stretched almost unbroken from 1985 to 1990, the proliferation of politically threatening unregulated residential spaces proved impossible to suppress, so the state exchanged its repressive influx controls for productive ‘orderly urbanization’ measures to stabilize the urban workforce (Platzky and Walker Reference Platzky and Walker1985: 28–30, 157). Among other things, this involved the introduction of property rights in townships, which saw well-established township residents purchasing homes on a leasehold basis. At the same time, squatter control legislation was amended to make unruly informal territories governable. This involved freezing the borders of existing settlements (Huchzermeyer Reference Huchzermeyer2003: 603) and designating them transit areas en route to formalization, or establishing them as informal towns. Although these policies can be read as a continuation of influx controls by other means (Booth and Biyela Reference Booth and Biyela1988; Huchzermeyer Reference Huchzermeyer2003: 603), an examination of provincial government archives suggests that, in the case of the Transvaal Provincial Authority at least, their roll-out on a provincial level was a genuine attempt to redress landlessness and to transition a growing population of ‘black’ residents into the formal city.Footnote ³ In this sense, in the decade leading up to the democratic elections of 1994, we can trace a growing view of the squatter camp as a route towards formal inclusion in the sought-after margins of the city.

If the closing years of apartheid introduced a pathway to more substantive inclusion in the city for politically excluded ‘black’ South Africans, the arrival of democracy in 1994 and a liberal array of constitutional rights – including the right to housing – produced a de jure citizenship that was both political and material. Although this form of citizenship was non-racial, the material effects of history produced a highly stratified citizenry – those who had already gained full citizenship through their existing capacity to access rights, such as to land and housing, and those entitled to these rights but subject to their ‘progressive realization’.Footnote ⁴ Squatters were among those who became part of this teleological trajectory towards full citizenship. Beyond the implicit and explicit promise of a better life for all expressed in the rise of the once-banned African National Congress (ANC) to power, an important way in which this transition was institutionalized was through housing development programmes and associated waiting lists.

The waiting list was not a new technology. In Atteridgeville, for instance, housing development had been suspended in 1964, and reiterated at ministerial level as late as 1985,Footnote ⁵ so many residents had already languished a long time on waiting lists for municipal houses. Despite the housing freeze, then, claims for space in the city were administered via a mechanism that granted inclusion according to the duration of a person's claim: the right to housing in the township depended on one's position on a list. In other words, democracy's promise of a better life was not made in an historical void, but in the context of an already temporally structured claim for inclusion, and in a context in which people's temporal relation to the city was already determined by the relative permanence or temporariness of their residence there, and – for the previous bearers of apartheid's permanent residence rights – by their place on the waiting list.

Thus, in the stalled teleology of the waiting list during apartheid, a modern ordering logic of the state was simultaneously present and absent, spectrally structuring the recognition of township dwellers' rights to the city even as the machinery of the state continued to obstruct the realization of those rights. This temporal relation to urban rights can be seen both abstractly, as an alienating relationship to the city, and also as a ‘visceral engagement’ (Harms Reference Harms2013: 346) with time: not only is inclusion constantly deferred, but tactics to cope with the constraints of waiting for that uncertain future deform everyday life and social relations. In Atteridgeville, the decades-long housing freeze effectively rendered all growth within the stable population – as well as all ‘black’ urban newcomers – ‘surplus' to the available living quarters. Candidates for family housing had to apply for it in Soshanguve,Footnote ⁶ a township more distant from Pretoria. Soshanguve was to be incorporated into the ‘independent’ Republic of Bophuthatswana, which would make its inhabitants citizens of that republic at the cost of their South African citizenship and any rights of permanent urban residence. Relocation to Soshanguve was strongly opposed by permanent residents of Atteridgeville, who clung to their foothold in the township.Footnote ⁷ The combination of this tenacious ‘surplus' and the impact of increasing ‘black’ urbanization resulted in the overcrowding of formal houses, and a proliferation of informal ‘backyard’ accommodation that eventually led to the declaration of Atteridgeville as a housing ‘crisis area’ in 1987.Footnote ⁸ In this context, the mundane conditions of everyday life became a visceral embodiment of residents' spectral, temporal relationship to the city, of an inclusion always beyond the horizon. Respondents' testimonies told of the discomfort and everyday tensions that related to living with several generations of immediate family in congested homes that became contested spaces in their own right. For many, this was the price to pay for access to the city, which was the closest a ‘black’ citizen could get to the substance of their nominal membership of the state.

SQUATTERS AND LIVING POLITICS IN JEFFSVILLE

The experience of mundane suffering – congestion, lack of privacy, and disruption of family hierarchies – became apparent from the reasons squatters gave for their eventual decision to join the squatter movement or seek stands in the camps, once they were established. The invasion of land at Jeffsville in 1991–92, led by longstanding claimants on the waiting list for municipal housing, served to alleviate a variety of parochial problems that would have been unremarkable but for their political origins in the defunct housing waiting list:

For Jeff Ramohlale, founder of Jeffsville – the first squatter settlement in Atteridgeville – these conditions were an important motivator. He recalled describing the would-be squatters' dilemma to an official:

Added to the impetus from growing families residing in municipal houses in the township, whose congested lives were a product of the housing shortage, were the interests of backyard lodgers struggling to pay rent to their better-established ‘black’ landlords, and enduring the mundane politics of landlord–tenant relations:

The express hope, then, was that a temporary move to the relative freedom of makeshift shacks on the margins of the formal township might establish a transition into formal housing. But alongside the insurgent claiming of space for mundane purposes in the hope of moving on to appropriate formal housing, there was simultaneously a more explicitly political purpose – the squatter camp was a tool in the national struggle for the political life of ‘black’ South Africans and racial equality in South Africa. In the late 1980s, the Atteridgeville Saulsville Residents Association (ASRO) was established in part as a banal guise for the then-outlawed ANC. At the time, the South African government was still engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, despite the gradual liberalization of many apartheid policies, and many anti-apartheid activists and militia members could not risk returning from exile as a result. From within the ranks of ASRO came the idea of creating an ‘impenetrable’ space in the township for the safe return of exiles and the security of ‘comrades' from revolutionary militias such as Mkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA). According to a key respondent, this was a broad strategy in the founding of informal settlements before 1994. Thus, the occupation of land combined the mundane politics of ‘surplus' life with the revolutionary politics of the anti-apartheid struggle, embodying an insurgent claim for both the material and political rights of citizenship.

Chance has observed that it is through everyday tactics and practices as basic as ‘[b]uilding shacks and disabling state water meters' that squatters ‘collectively mobilize and identify with each other as political communities' (Chance Reference Chance2011: xxv). In Jeffsville, many of these forms of everyday practice became deeply ambiguous as they collectively challenged the state's monopoly on coercive force, enacting what we might term founding violence (drawing on Agamben Reference Agamben1998: 19; Benjamin Reference Benjamin, Lawrence and Karim2007: 273, 274; Weber Reference Weber and Besteman2002: 13). The process of illegally building and rebuilding shacks is one such practice. Land occupation was attempted in several areas around Atteridgeville, and dwellings immediately demolished, before what is now Jeffsville endured. It involved participants erecting shacks with found materials as quickly as possible in an attempt to achieve a strong presence before officials arrived to confront them, demolish the dwellings and confiscate their materials. This process of planning, labouring and suffering repression together over and over again is consonant with Abahlali's conception of political subjectivization as a product of ‘all the pain and the suffering that the poor are subjected to every second in our lives' (Selmeczi Reference Selmeczi2012: 505; Zikode Reference Zikode2006: 186). Ramohlale's arrest and imprisonment without trial after trying to reclaim confiscated materials from a demolition vehicle were further visceral investments in the struggle for space in the city, illustrating the way in which the very process of marginalization under conditions of differentiated citizenship can form the foundation for a counter-politics (Roy Reference Roy2009: 8).

Once the authorities ‘tired’ of the struggle and conceded land to the initial squatters, the aim of creating an impenetrable territory prevailed. The squatters dug a border – a trench around the settlement to prevent the entry of police vehicles during community meetings. Ramohlale's committee marked out plots to promote invisibility and inaccessibility, and residents co-produced this environment by agreeing not to build fences – which would obstruct the escape of ‘comrades' from the police or special forces in a chase – nor to give names to the narrow lanes and paths through the settlement – which would aid the police in navigating the area. The committee set up a nightly patrol with the purpose of identifying intelligence agents and criminals, apprehending them and bringing them before a ‘people's court’ of leaders. This became a deeply collective effort:

All men among the squatters were also expected to perform everyday surveillance functions, so that anything suspicious could be fed to those in the ANC and APLA who were able to investigate:

Thus, the political power of the settlement depended on collective solidarity expressed through daily practices. This was further evidenced by the coercive norms that surrounded mass action in the early years, which saw all shops forced to close, and people beaten (male shopkeeper, Jeffsville, 2012) or stripped naked and forced to return home in humiliation (female resident, Jeffsville, 2012) if they were caught shirking participation.

BRAZZAVILLE: FIGHTING FOR INCLUSION AFTER DEMOCRACY

Whereas Jeffsville was established several years before the first democratic elections in South Africa, subsequent extensions of the settlement occurred as the transition to democracy advanced. Regime change in 1994 brought substantial political changes, the demise of the last vestiges of official ‘influx control’ policies, and a new constitution that enshrined the ‘progressive realization’ of the right to housing. For those already ensconced in urban squatter settlements, this called for a ‘politics of patience’ (Appadurai Reference Appadurai2001; Selmeczi Reference Selmeczi2012) in place of apartheid's insurgency. But urban landlessness became more apparent as previously ‘second-class' urbanites sought to claim space of their own in the city, since they were no longer legally confined to labour tenancy on peri-urban farms or temporary accommodation in labour barracks or ‘hostels' in the townships. They confronted a regime that was new in perhaps every respect but its continuing reluctance to countenance their claims to space.

Montgomery Matenji, the founder of the extensive territories of Phomolong, Vergenoeg, Brazzaville and Siyahlala, which stretch in a curve to the west of Jeffsville, explained that although the Transvaal Provincial Authority conceded further land to squatters seeking alternatives to Ramohlale's regime around 1993, it set strict limits on the extent of the squatter territory; it attempted to ‘freeze’ the squatter camp just as the formal township of Atteridgeville had been ‘frozen’ for decades during apartheid. Matenji began defying these limits for the sake of men who wanted to leave single-sex workers' hostels in the township in order to establish homes in the city where their families could join them. Many longstanding squatters spoke of the squatter camp as an escape from the mutilated domestic life of single-sex workers' hostels – the fate of perpetually migrant workers, cut off from their spouses and children in return for a livelihood that would sustain their dependants in the destitute reserves:

The distorted but everyday domestic arrangements faced by hostel dwellers were an important way in which the effects of the state's production of ‘surplus' life continued to be felt during the transition to democracy. Those whose tenancies on farms in the area ended during the transition faced a similar problem of urban landlessness, and added to the unwanted excess of would-be urban squatters. In his continual transgression of the state's efforts to freeze the borders of the Atteridgeville settlements, Matenji recognized the fact that would-be squatters' circumstances as a ‘surplus' population were deeply rooted in past state policy. In contrast, the municipality wielded apartheid-style notions of squatters' imagined ‘origins' in the late 1990s in an effort to evict more recent settlers who they deemed illegitimate. Matenji recalled the city council ordering the squatters at the western edge of Vergenoeg to leave so that the land could be upgraded to house others:

A revival of insurgent politics appeared imminent as Matenji chose to settle more squatters immediately and to call the newly settled area ‘Brazzaville’; this was an implicit threat to recreate the civil war conditions in the Congo at the time if the municipality persisted in its attempts to evict them. Instead, the Brazzaville squatters took the municipality to court to defend their claim to land in the area, stating that going back to where they came from was tantamount to returning to ‘our mothers' wombs' (Cuthbert Makgalo, Brazzaville, 2012). In so doing, they extended existing repertoires of solidarity, including informal policing, disciplinary procedures and service provision – and queued en masse until 10 p.m. to complete affidavits for evidence to be used in the court case (Montgomery Matenji, Brazzaville, 2012).

In court documents, local councillors and city officials argued the opposite, saying that the area should be reserved for legitimate ‘residents of Atteridgeville’ – those on the existing waiting list, for whom the area was to be upgraded.Footnote ¹¹ Emphasis was placed on the assertion that, barring a few ‘who claim to originate from Atteridgeville and Saulsville’,Footnote ¹² the illegal squatters' ‘specific origins cannot be traced’.Footnote ¹³ The implication was that, because of their lack of provenance in the local area, these more recent squatters did not qualify for space in the city. At this point, it appears clear that length of stay and place of origin – reduced to a simple binary resembling that of autochthon and allochthon – became formally politicized in the struggle for government housing and a legitimate place in the city. Nevertheless, the residents of Brazzaville won the right to continue living there. The Pretoria High Court reaffirmed the concept of transition for even the most recent arrivals, stipulating that no eviction could take place until alternative residential land was provided for the claimants.

Matenji was determined to resist the perpetuation of apartheid's injustices under democratically elected, legitimate ‘black’ local councillors. His defiant persistence in settling new squatters clearly matches the living politics of ‘surplus' people that I have already described:

‘NO LONGER THE SAME’: SUSPENDED TRANSITION?

Over a long passage of time – longest for the founding residents of Jeffsville – the idea of informality as a transitional route to formal inclusion has hollowed out, producing a sense that this temporary condition may in fact be permanent. In many ways, this has been experienced as a result of dysfunction, indifference or moral failure in local and national government, and a growing sense of disillusionment and outrage overshadowing the ‘politics of patience’ in Mshongo. Yet, positioned as they are on the threshold of the modern, regulated city, many of the squatters' own survival strategies have reinforced the undesirable state of apparently permanent temporariness that afflicts the settlements. Desperate for a livelihood in a context of jobless urbanization, many have turned to renting out backyard shacks, increasing the area's population, further densifying dwellings, and placing irresolvable pressures on the area's already fragile physical and social infrastructure. Those granted a government home often sell or rent out their shack to others. Hence, the squatter camp never diminishes, even as government works to transition squatters into formal inclusion. In settlement extensions that have not yet been electrified, power piracy is ubiquitous. The consequence is the curse of electricity blackouts in winter and, with the use of candles and paraffin, fires that spread easily in the dense conditions and are hard to quell without water on tap. Some squatters have lost their homes to fire more than once during the long wait for transition. Overpopulation has also meant the proliferation of pit toilets in the dolomitic soil of the settlements, which are prone to sinkholes that can swallow whole shacks. One resident shared a horrifying story of being trapped in a pit toilet when it collapsed:

This violation both of the body and of dignity brings a new dimension to Harms' notion of a visceral engagement with time, as physical threats to the bodily integrity of squatters join with the disabling effects of interminable waiting.

A sombre theme of many of my discussions with informal leaders was their sense of the futility of the struggle for formal housing, and, by extension, formal inclusion. Initially, the settlement was formed as a temporary place, a step in the transition towards formal housing and urban inclusion. But several leaders now privately believe that the transition will never be completed. This shared conviction signals the failure of the queue as a route to citizenship, and a sense that the transition will be suspended permanently. This fact is expressed not explicitly but implicitly in a variety of ways.

Discussion of life and death in the squatter camp is one way in which this sense of suspended transition is reflected. The duration of children's lives marks the long passage of time and the ripples of stratified citizenship through the generations. Some families see their children reach adulthood still mired in the hardships of the squatter camp – the ages of children become a means of expressing how long people have suffered in the settlement:

Others turn down the security of a government stand in their old age, passing the advantages of private property ownership to their children and allowing the next generation to enjoy the benefits of citizenship denied to their parents during two decades in Mshongo:

Reflections on death are also interesting, especially given Geschiere's emphasis on funerals as a site for the performance of belonging in many parts of Africa. Geschiere insists on the potential political significance of the funeral, due to its status as the ‘final test of belonging’, for, traditionally, ‘a person belongs where he or she will be buried’ (Geschiere Reference Geschiere2009: 55–6). Whereas Geschiere focused on the ways in which people deliberately claim belonging through performative funerals at sites of burial in Cameroon, in Mshongo we find a pattern in which, through burials, the squatter camp is produced as a terminal place of residence, a permanent home:

Here, death marks the end point of an unfinished struggle for inclusion. My field notes record a similar reflection from Jeffsville's founder:

Discussions were also replete with clues to the ways in which demographic change has interacted with public sector dysfunction to disrupt the orderly transition early squatters hoped for. A key theme was that of corruption in the allocation of housing, and specifically the fraudulent issuing of title deeds by a notorious official. This allowed those not on the list to ‘jump the queue’ while legitimate claimants to formal inclusion languished in the visceral effects of their suspended temporal relation to the city. Certain longstanding squatters have discovered that, according to municipal records, they own the title to a particular house, but when they try to occupy it they find that it is already occupied. Since 2005, there have been ongoing popular initiatives by those with genuine title deeds to evict the illegitimate residents of the homes they own – yet even some victims of the fraudulent property economy empathize with the occupiers who refuse to leave until the money they paid to an official is returned. One woman had not been able to evict residents of the stand issued to her even though she had a court order. The occupier refuses to leave until the 50,000 Rand they paid to a housing official for the property is returned.

As corrupt practices began to interfere with the technology of the waiting list, issues of identity and origins came into play as longstanding local claimants saw ‘people from the rural areas' secure houses before them. Through corruption of the administrative justice underwriting the distributive justice of the waiting list, new forms of inequality were created, as a male respondent in Jeffsville noted:

On the one hand, this tension between established claimants and newcomers has resonances with autochthony, albeit at a micro-local level. But this discourse of autochthony is not simply about place of origin, or about an organic and visceral connection to the land, which many scholars have emphasized (Dunn Reference Dunn2009; Geschiere Reference Geschiere2009; Marshall-Fratani Reference Marshall-Fratani2006). Instead, it is about political identity: about who ‘fought for’ and ‘created’ the settlement, about whose struggle, both political and personal, it embodies. It is also entangled with a crude economic logic in which those with financial resources are able to secure the benefits of citizenship, while the full citizenship of the poor is seemingly deferred forever. This in turn polarizes people along economic lines and gives a political context to morally stigmatizing claims that poor South Africans are ‘jealous' and resent their neighbours' financial successes (Geffen Reference Geffen2008; Leadership 2013; O'Sullivan Reference O'Sullivan2013; UNHCR 2008).

At a felt distance from the state, demographic change has also affected the everyday social relations that supported security and predictability early in the life of the settlement. A growing and changing population has rendered the once tight-knit social fabric of the settlements threadbare, and many conversations featured nostalgia for a real or imagined earlier time in which squatters knew their neighbours, trusted their leaders and invested common labour to improve security and services that made life on the margins of the state more liveable. There is also a sense that informal institutions have been depleted and are no longer able to stand in for an absent state.

The perceived permanence of the camps has intensified the contestation of identities between those whose struggle it represents, and those for whom it is seen simply as a resource. In Jeffsville, the theme of commitment and indifference is evident in tensions over the elimination of boundaries between squatter landlords and tenants. The municipality has recently instructed squatter tenants that they should not pay rent, since by law their squatter ‘landlords' do not formally own the property they are renting out. In Jeffsville, this has led to new tensions; for the founders of the settlement, the measured ‘yard’ on which a squatter's makeshift dwellings lie constitutes his or her claim for property rights. Until such time as this claim is redeemed for a title deed, the land is the squatter's property. One group of leaders has agreed to the municipality's policy out of necessity, but nevertheless they strongly disagree:

Once again, this issue turns on a clear identity division between older and newer squatters, whose distinct historical claims to property rights are not recognized by government:

Here we see an implicit definition of squatting as a political practice, an act expressing political commitment and the pursuit of political goals. Merely renting a shack is defined as apolitical, a purely economic transaction. There is an indication that many of the established squatters (landlords, for want of a better term) have earned their place through their commitment to the life of the camp in its initial establishment; that they have come to ‘own’ their space in the city by virtue of their participation. Thus, ‘squatting’ is read as the political process by which an individual comes to possess the land he or she has laid claim to by forceful occupation. Tenants as a class are cast as newcomers who have not invested the commitment needed to ‘own’ a place. On the other hand, government policy, egalitarian in intent, classifies all residents of the squatter camp as a universal category of the poor: ‘it's their policy: everyone who lives in the squatter camp is underprivileged so there's no need for one to pay rent’ (male resident, Jeffsville, 2012).

Worsening conditions in the growing squatter camps, and the sheer duration of exclusion from services in some areas, appear to have led to a reinvigoration of protest from the mid-2000s onwards – signalling an end to the ‘politics of patience’. As it happened, this period was also one of increased cross-border migration into the informal settlements, and I go on to explore the impact of a growing immigrant population under the conditions of incomplete citizenship already described.

COMMITMENT, INDIFFERENCE AND ‘XENOPHOBIC’ MOBILIZATION

Among the longstanding squatters of Mshongo are foreign-born residents who shared in the area's history and helped establish it. The leadership includes longstanding foreign-born residents (Zimbabwean male resident, Mshongo, 2008) and a small number of foreign-born squatters have operated businesses in Jeffsville since its inception (male shopkeeper, Jeffsville, 2012). The situation is different for more recent arrivals, however (Zimbabwean male resident, Mshongo, 2008). Piecing together various respondents' observations, it appears that foreign newcomers began arriving after 1994, increasing in the late 1990s and again around 2005. These dates correspond roughly to the passing of the Refugees Act in 1998, and, from 2005, the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy. This contributed in large part to South Africa's transformation into the world's number one host of new asylum seekers between 2006 and 2011 (UNHCR 2012);Footnote ¹⁴ in particular, 2011 census data show sharp increases in the numbers of Zimbabweans living in shack settlements since 2001. Broadly, this and the corresponding proliferation of new informal shops in close proximity to each other in the unregulated environment of the squatter camp – a situation that eroded established traders' livelihoods and social bonds between residents and local shopkeepers – were seen as a rather recent phenomenon.

There is little evidence of ‘xenophobic’ tendencies against longstanding ‘foreigners' before 2008. However, on 18 March 2008, attacks against foreigners and looting of foreign-owned businesses began in the settlement during a protest march (Chauke Reference Chauke2008) and continued intensely for about a week, displacing large numbers of people to ad hoc shelters. Numerous informal shops were looted and destroyed, and it is estimated that up to seven people were killed:

It was virtually impossible to disentangle an account of ‘what really happened’ from the multiple versions relayed to me; after a great deal of close reading of different accounts I can offer only the most blurred impression. Fingers were pointed in various directions – at young people, drug users, business people; at outsiders from the neighbouring settlement of Itireleng on the one hand; spiteful neighbours on the other. Yet there were also clear indications of a broad collective project to evict foreigners, with the involvement of certain leaders and members of community structures at the lowest scales of civic life in the settlement. Respondents insisted that there was a high level of consent to the planned eviction, and broad participation by every stratum of squatter society, although it was clear that not all residents approved of the violent way in which the eviction was carried out. Many were against the looting of foreigners' goods but, rather than opposing the eviction per se, were disappointed that it could not have been implemented in a ‘proper’ way. It is apparent, then, that the attacks were a complex mobilization comprising elements of broad-based consent as well as elements of self-serving opportunism, and that they are not best treated as a single, cohesive event. There is often more than one true account of an outbreak of collective violence, which can serve individual interests and develops endogenous features once it has begun (Basu Reference Basu1995: 49; Kalyvas Reference Kalyvas2009: 77–83). For the purposes of this paper, I am interested not in untangling the often obscure details, but in providing a political account of the clearly evident collective squatter project to rid the area of foreigners. What did the arrival of large numbers of foreign newcomers mean politically in an area where established residents continue to wait for inclusion among the urban citizens, caught in a seemingly stalled transition towards the ‘progressive realization’ of property rights?

Trying to explain the popular antagonism to foreigners, a longstanding resident and one-time leader in Brazzaville described it this way:

The idea of foreign newcomers as an additional surplus to the resources of a state that has not yet managed to absorb its historical ‘surplus' was similarly expressed by a Mozambique-born leader in Jeffsville in 2008. This established ‘foreigner’ not only expounded a similar logic of the priority due to citizens by the state, and of the link between the evictions and squatters' incomplete citizenship, but pointed to the global protectionism in immigration policy in order to problematize indiscriminate tolerance of cross-border migration in the context of a stratified South African citizenry:

It is clear here that violence is linked to a struggle to realize a citizenship regime (cf. Von Holdt et al. Reference Von Holdt, Langa, Molapo, Mogapi, Ngubeni, Dlamini and Kirsten2011: 24) that should prioritize longstanding squatters' needs in the distribution of resources. The repeated metaphor of political community as a family – with government as the parent and citizens as the dependants – is an interesting expression of the naturalization of a statist definition of political community, and a powerful illustration of a certain normative view of the natural priority due to citizens over others. It also expresses the deep intermingling of the personal and the political among those who have been rendered ‘surplus' by barriers to the city since before the transition to democracy.

We have seen that collective action has always been an indispensable part of the life of the squatter camp – from collective land invasions, to nightly patrols, to gathering to protest or complete affidavits for court action. It has been a fundamental practice in actively constituting the political identity of squatters both in Jeffsville and Brazzaville. One of the most prevalent complaints about foreigners focused on their failure to contribute to the collective struggle for better living conditions – a failure considered exploitative since they reap the benefits of social mobilization along with everyone else:

This emphasis on forms of political commitment and civic labour as the basis of authentic membership was reiterated over and over again by different respondents:

In fact, foreign newcomers do not have the right to vote in South Africa, and are perhaps unlikely to share in local struggles and political mobilizations. For many foreign newcomers, the political project of the host community will be at best secondary to their immediate need to establish a life in South Africa, or at worst entirely irrelevant. Having no direct stake in local struggles, the political struggles of many remain elsewhere, often in fragile states beyond South Africa's borders. Their pursuit of shelter and livelihoods in South Africa, although it appears as a plight they have in common with poor local squatters, does not involve the same collective political claim for dignity and inclusion in citizenship's community of rights as it does for squatter citizens. Added to foreigners' political indifference are the felt effects of their subsistence tactics, which also have a political dimension. This was expressed by a woman who linked foreigners' political indifference to unfair casual labour dynamics and working conditions, which can only compound the uncertainties of life in a squatter camp:

This link to foreigners' ‘care’ or political commitment may help explain why several respondents insisted that violence against foreigners occurs only during marches – attacks have occurred twice more, in 2010 and 2011, with different proximate causes but always in conjunction with a protest march. Several people said that crime, whether organized or simply opportunistic, thrives in the absence of authority and surveillance when leaders are absent, heading up demonstrations. The claim that tsotsis, or local thugs, take advantage of the authority vacuum left by marches has persisted from the early days of the settlement until today. Given the coercive measures used to police participation, such ‘crimes' can be seen to serve the mobilization agenda, although there is scant evidence that leaders encourage these acts. The environment of impunity created by the exodus of leaders and large numbers of residents from the settlement during marches can also be exploited by particular interest groups.

However, the prominence of protest mobilization in trajectories leading to violence against foreigners brings me to Geschiere's (Reference Geschiere2009) proposition that the power of an autochthony appeal might depend on ‘a concentrating force’ that generates ‘a shared sensorial experience of the world’ (p. 35), uniting diverse individuals in a feeling of ‘authentic belonging’ (p. 34). The technology of the demonstration may also be such a concentrating force, as it creates a dynamic embodiment of the local political community – a performative process in which heterogeneous groups are united in their commitment to political action. Stories of protest experiences suggest that these forms of mobilization not only respond to the everyday indignities and uncertainties that inscribe politics on the squatter body, but also involve a process of suffering together – a mirror of historical experience. One demonstration that ended in attacks on foreigners began with a last-minute refusal of the squatters' application to march after people had been gathered all day. Another began after buses transporting protesters to the ANC headquarters in Johannesburg were diverted to a weighbridge and deemed to be overloaded. Protesters were returned to Atteridgeville and had to wait for the return of leaders who had made it through to Johannesburg in a taxi. Chaos and looting ensued when officials, who squatters believed had deliberately obstructed their planned protest, then called a separate meeting to discuss the issues (Stevens Mohlala, Brazzaville, 2012).

Foreigners are often seen as convenient ‘soft targets' for popular anger, but this obscures a deeper politics behind the violence: a solidarity born of politicized suffering polarizes the committed and the uncommitted. There is a politics of proximity intrinsic to the collective experience of suffering and resisting together, which increases social distance from non-participants. Beyond this, protest mobilization relies on similar repertoires and evokes the insurgent subjectivity of the ‘struggle’ years, with the same coercive strategies to build solidarity, the same iconography of revolt (such as burning tyres), and the same tradition of singing revolutionary songs. And, indeed, marches may respond to situations that reproduce squatters' historical exclusion and victimization all too vividly – the march that preceded the 2008 attacks was a response to rumours that the settlement land had been purchased (male respondent, 27 October 2008) and that the squatters would be forcibly removed to the more distant area of Hammanskraal (focus group discussion, 20 October 2008). These rumours gave the march a special potential to reproduce latent political subjectivities that sharpened the borders between autochthon and allochthon, and between the committed and the indifferent.

As we have seen, foreigners seldom join the community's struggle. Speaking of Somali shopkeepers who continue to operate their shops during community protests, Mohlala added:

Lack of commitment appears as a betrayal of the political community, and the financial gain that accrues to the uncommitted as a result of their indifference heightens the sense of outrage. It is very clearly not a simple ethno-racial hatred that motivates collective attacks on shops. Rather, it is the idea that they take from the community without giving; that they benefit without contributing; that they are indifferent to the unfinished struggle of the squatters for citizenship.