Unsettling Insurgency: Reflections on Women's Insurgent Practices in South Africa

Abstract

This paper builds on work which celebrates insurgent planning practices, and which recognises the possibilities for repression inherent within these. Calling for more attention to the practice of so-called repressive insurgencies, it uses two case studies from Durban, South Africa to unsettle some assumptions arguably embedded in notions of "anti-democratic" or repressive insurgency. The cases tell the stories of marginalised women who participate through insurgency in shaping their city. Their contributions to resolving unmet housing and employment needs represent acts of insurgency against a state which has, in part, retreated from the provision of shelter and employment through its commitment to a neoliberal agenda. These insurgent practices parallel other celebrated insurgent contributions to cities. The women, however, also manage crime and violence in their local areas, using a range of strategies, some of which can be considered insurgent, as they directly challenge the authority and competence of the state. These crime management practices are, however, at times very violent, as the women's insurgent practices involve forms of vigilantism to achieve their purposes. Yet given the marginalised status of the women, and the reality of an absent state, trying to make sense of these practices (from the perspective of planning theory) proves challenging. Labelling them anti-democratic and repressive is arguably inadequate. The paper makes use of this contradiction to unsettle the concept of insurgency and develop further ideas about the difficulties of celebrating or condemning the contributions of the marginalised to diverse and unequal cities.

Profiling South African gender inequality in informal self-employment

“…Clearly it is necessary to review gender differences in order to articulate problems, identify solutions and promote state action. In the Global South, a political lens must be used to discern how race intersects with gender to explain the feminisation of the poor (Meth 2010). In South Africa, the political struggle for gender equality went hand in hand with the politics of democracy and racial equality.…”

On handling urban informality in southern africa

“…Recently, Asia and the Middle East have been the focus of illuminating studies, with a lot of emphasis on what Roy (2011) calls "subaltern urbanism". There is an increasing volume of work on Africa examining various aspects of informality among them informal workers (Lindell, 2010); insurgency (Meth, 2010); taxation (Stern and Barbour, 2005); and the conceptualisation and treatment of informality in academic and policy circles (Potts, 2008). This paper adds to the stocks of knowledge built up by these studies by explicitly interrogating governmental responses to the phenomenon of urban informality in southern Africa.…”

Insurgent participation: consensus and contestation in planning the redevelopment of Berlin-Tempelhof airport

“…If the notion of insurgency is frequently associated with optimistic promises (cf. Meth, 2010), it is crucial to remain critical of participation both in its consensual and insurgent form. Disruption against consensual governanceprograms may work productively to strengthen accountability and further local democracy (Briggs, 2008).…”

“…In contrast to these accounts, a number of authors have placed greater emphasis on the workings of conflict within participatory planning (Meth, 2010;Rinn, 2013). These scholars insist that participation is hardly neutralizing dissent.…”