Mumma Jstor Article

The Nation and its Politics: Discussing Political Modernity in the 'Other' South Africa
Author(s): Tawanda Sydesky Nyawasha

Source: Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 42, No. 2 (April 2016), pp. 229-242
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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Journal of Southern African Studies , 2016 S J Routledge
Taylor & Francis Croup
Vol. 42, No. 2, 229-242, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2016.1150564
The Nation and its Politics: Discussing

Political Modernity in the 'Other' South Africa
Tawanda Sydesky Nyawasha

(Department of Sociology, University of Limpopo; Department of Sociology,
University of Hong Kong)
This article is an attempt to reflect on nationalist politics and its accompanying political
imaginations in South Africa, in the process questioning the assertion of a single ' rainbow
nation', by locating the ways in which community is imagined in post-apartheid South Africa.
It looks at the 'other* South Africa , which has yet to realise the gains of political modernity. For
these citizens of South Africa, modernity is but a distant project. Its consequences in most parts
of this 'other' South Africa have been not only extreme poverty, social marginality or political
exclusion, but also the emergence and formation of new subjectivities and collective agency.
This article seeks to theorise the modern political subject in the 'other' South Africa that has not
actively participated in the project of modernity and globalisation. In the process, it seeks also
to examine how citizen-subject positions are being constituted - particularly in the interaction
between state and non-state actors, as a precursor to a future study of the broader interplay of
citizenship, governmentality and political subjectivity in contemporary South Africa.
Introduction
Since its publication in 1983, Benedict Anderson's book Imagined Communities continues to
inspire discussions and debates about nationalism and nationalist thought. Anderson defines
the nation as 'an imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and
sovereign'.1 It is this definition of a nation as an 'imagined political community' that I take in
order to locate and show the dominant and distinct forms of political imagining in contemporary
South Africa. It is on the basis of these imaginings that one would propose that South Africa
is better seen as a 'bifurcated state', a notion I adapt from Mamdani, rather than as a single
'imagined community'. This bifurcation, which I will discuss in detail in this article, assumes
a somewhat different measure and dimension than in Mamdani's usage, which was largely
concerned with how colonial policies were designed to rule African colonies most effectively.2
Viewing post-apartheid South Africa as a state with 'two nations' is not new. Thabo Mbeki, as
early as 2008, in an address to the South African parliament, described South Africa as racially
divided into two nations: one white and largely prosperous, the other black and poor:
We therefore make bold to say that South Africa is a country of two nations. One of these nations
is white, relatively prosperous, regardless of gender or geographic dispersal. It has ready access
to a developed economic, physical, educational, communication and other infrastructure . . . The
second and larger nation of South Africa is black and poor, with the worst affected being women
1 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, Verso,
2006), p. 6.
2 M. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 1996).
© 2016 The Editorial Board of the Journal of Southern African Studies
230 Tawanda Sydesky Nyawasha
in the rural areas, the black rural population in general and the disabled. This nation lives under
conditions of a grossly underdeveloped economic, physical, educational, communication and other
infrastructure.3
Setting aside the debate ignited by Mbeki's 'two nations' image of South Africa, his
characterisation of social, economic and political polarisation along racial lines, of the stark
inequality between the black poor majority and the white privileged minority, provides us with
a launching pad from which to start to theorise the 'other' South Africa. I would argue that the
birfucation of the South African nation far transcends race, economic, religious and political
affinities within the country. It is largely an outcome of the neoliberal and globalising processes
that are increasingly shaping the ordering of nations throughout the world. Such processes
(including globalisation and its epiphenomena) constitute what I will call 'the millennial
challenge'. By its very nature, the millennial challenge calls for the need to attend to the
needs of the majority of South Africans who are yet to benefit from political liberation and the
enterprise of modernity. Despite all the promises and hopes that democracy and modernity have
come to be associated with, political modernity for the poor living in the 'other South Africa'
has not resulted in economic liberation and emancipation. This disjunction between political
modernity and the actual experiences and practices of political alienation, isolation and social
marginality separates the 'other South Africa' from the mainstream nation.
Consideration of the merits and limitations of Mbeki's 'two nations' argument lies beyond
the scope of this article. Moreover, I will argue that viewing the South African nation as
'dualistic' constitutes a categorisation error. Rather, we see one nation with various ways of
imagining that nation. Hence the nation can be imagined religiously, culturally, politically,
or even in some instance economically.4 The bifurcation I talk about in this article lies in the
way citizens identify themselves as belonging to the nation. I locate the major thrust of my
analysis in the practices and processes of political imagination that seem to be emerging in
contemporary South Africa. I will also propose that there is a dual divide in the way the nation
is imagined politically. Thus the nation becomes 'dual' in the various ways through which
citizens have come to identify themselves and participate in (or shun) the activities of the
state. It refers to a sphere of political imagining through which various ways of articulating
issues of citizenship and nationhood in practice are undertaken. In this sphere, the nation
is imagined through the various practices and actions that citizens adopt to negotiate with
political modernity. Such practices often involve political protest, demonstrations and other
forms of dissenting from existing formal and conventional politics. It often involves an
insurgent form of political and 'national' imagining analogous to Holston's 'autoconstruction'
in Brazil.5 Borrowing from Holston, we can term this form of 'national' and political
imagining in the South Africa in question 'insurgent nationalism'6 because, in its outlook
and function, it involves an investment in collective agency and insurgent participation in
the various projects that contest and challenge the structures of modern governmentality
and the globalising order.
Holston's ideas on 'insurgent citizenship' in Brazil help us to understand how the poor often
resort to various forms of active participation that contest entrenched systems of authority
and power. Insurgent action becomes an alternative way of reformulating and defining
3 T. Mbeki, 'Reconciliation and Nation Building', available at http://www.unisa.ac.za/contents/colleges/docs/1998/

tml998/sp9805 29.pdf, retrieved 31 January 2016.
4 I owe this observation to Lwazi Siyabonga Lushaba.
5 J. Holston, Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil (Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 2008), p. 4 and passim .
6 My use of the notion of 'insurgent nationalism' owes much of its theoretical and empirical meaning to the work
of James Holston on 'insurgent citizenship'. In this article, loosely translated, the notion of insurgent nationalism
refers to the kind of political imagining emerging from the way in which groups of the poor in South Africa have
come to identify themselves and articulate their everyday grievances.
The Nation and its Politics 23 1
citizenship through initiatives of the poor. Holston sees globalisation and rapid urbanisation as
presenting challenges to the poor in the peripheries of Brazilian society.7 The struggle for basic
resources in everyday life in these peripheries has generated new forms of citizenship, which,
Holston suggests, take an 'insurgent' form. This analysis accords closely with Appadurai's
claim that globalisation is producing new geographies of 'governmentality'.8 Such forms of
governmentality are produced and reproduced when citizens make claims to fundamental
citizenship rights that they do not already have. South Africa is no exception to such forms of
governmentality emerging in urban peripheries, townships and informal settlements.
In what follows, I examine the intersection between citizenship, human agency and political
subjectivity. I will use the concept of 'subjectivity' to illustrate how a 'new' form of politics
is emerging in South Africa, citing different 'citizen projects' that have emerged in response
to various challenges caused by the limits of political modernity. My overall argument is that
poor citizens in South Africa imagine themselves not so much as members of a 'rainbow
nation' but as members of the 'other South Africa' across time and space through political
claims that challenge existing regimes of established authority. Before we look at examples
of such practices in poor South African communities, however, it is important to consider in
more detail the two dominant forms of nationalism in South Africa, which, I would argue,
exist side by side. Although there are various ways of 'imagining the nation' (nationalisms)
in any society, for our purposes we focus on the explicit (or formal) and the insurgent forms
that are dominant in contemporary, post-apartheid South Africa. What these two forms of
political imagining have in common is that both act as means through which citizenship is
expressed and effected. For the poor, mainly living in townships, rural areas and informal
settlements, citizenship is enacted through action (individual and collective). It is through
action that the state is encountered and interacted with. On the other hand, for the middle
class (both white and black), meaningful citizenship entails participation in civic and political
processes, which, in most cases, are seen as facilitating and guaranteeing the attainment and
consolidation of civic and democratic liberties. We need now to theorise these dominant
forms of political imagining.
'Insurgent Nationalism' and 'Explicit Nationalism': Two Domains of

Imagining the Nation?
I have earlier referred to the form of political and national imagining that is a product of
practices, which occur at the margins of society, aimed at challenging conventional political
forms of authority. It is this form of nationalism that I have called 'insurgent nationalism'.
It is 'insurgent' in several ways - most significantly, in that it grows out of individual
experiences and feelings of exclusion, alienation and disillusionment with modern forms of
state governance. By its very nature, insurgent nationalism comes into existence through the
participation of individual citizens in collective practices of making political claims through
various repertoires of contention, including mass protest, civil disobedience and the like. Seen
this way, the nation can be defined or imagined through the need and pursuit for justice and
democracy. Ivor Chipkin makes a similar observation by arguing that the 'nation' is simply a
political community that is collectively organised by the pursuit for freedom and democracy.9
The same way of understanding the nation can be seen in Partha Chatterjee's brilliant treatment
of popular politics in India. For Chatterjee, the poor in India enact certain forms of political
imagining within a domain that he calls 'political society' : a domain characterised by illegality,
7 See J. Holston, 'Insurgent Citizenship in the Era of Global Peripheries', City and Society , 21,2 (2009), pp. 245-67.
8 A. Appadurai, The Future as Cultural Fact : Essays on the Global Condition (London, Verso, 2013).
9 I. Chipkin, Do South Africans Exist? Nationalism, Democracy and Identity of 'the People' (Johannesburg, Wits
University Press, 2007).
232 Tawanda Sy desky Nyawasha
strategic engagement and negotiation with state governmentality.10 In this article, the argument
is that insurgent nationalism' in South Africa is conditioned by a confluence of historical
and social forces associated with globalisation and modernity. In some cases, the practices
of contention by poor citizens in the 'other South Africa' occur outside the view of the public
or media. Following James Scott, it might be correct to refer to such practices as 'hidden
transcripts' occurring backstage.11 1 would argue that these 'hidden' practices constitute an
array on a continuum of citizen practices that are used by the poor not only to challenge
authority but to imagine themselves as fully fledged citizens deserving recognition from
established institutions of state governmentality. Such practices have both a symbolic and
instrumental significance, in the way they foster a cultural and political understanding of
what it means to be a citizen in different poor communities. The poor, spread among different
communities and provinces across South Africa, imagine themselves as a solitary entity
through these diverse forms of resistance and popular dissent (both overt and covert). It is
this form of nationalism that resonates with what Ndlovu and Muzondidya termed 'grotesque
nationalism' in Zimbabwe.12
Explicit nationalism, by contrast, represents a form of national and political imagining that
is produced largely through formal national symbols, national events and activities, and also
through mainstream political processes, such as voting, political party affiliation and other forms
of citizen participation. It is 'explicit' in the various ways through which it is enacted, expressed
and demonstrated as constituting what it means to be South African. This form of nationalism
or belonging is a product of clearly developed or formulated ways of both national and political
imagining that leaves no questions about one's belonging to a particular political or national
community. The irony in South Africa is that 'explicit nationalism' has become associated with
those who have benefited and continue to benefit from the project of modernity. This form of
nationalism has largely remained a defining character of the mainstream and prosperous South
Africa, to use Mbeki's characterisation referred to earlier.
We can easily draw notable parallels between these two forms of nationalism that have
undeniably polarised the nation in terms of identification, belonging and participation. A first
distinction is that 'explicit nationalism' emerges from the formal, accepted and acknowledged
practices that are in most cases backed up by law and other mechanisms of governance.
'Insurgent nationalism', on the other hand, puts these formal and legal processes into question.
Indeed, it emerges out of its questioning of the law and other formally accepted mechanisms
of citizen participation and democratic inclusivity. The quintessential character of insurgent
nationalism is that it occurs outside the purview or boundaries of state governmentality. Also,
its imagining is enmeshed with the several processes that arise with globalisation and the
modernising of society, and which present serious survival challenges to the poor of South
Africa. Insurgent imagining in such communities emerges as citizens strive to address the
day-to-day survival challenges that they face, which are rooted within the broader neoliberal
policies adopted after the attainment of South Africa's democracy in 1994. Such policies
(for example, as implemented through the strategic perspective of the growth, employment
and redistribution [GEAR] framework) meant that the African National Congress (ANC)-led
government abandoned much of its initial redistribution project intended to benefit the poor.
Thus, to take one example, such neoliberal policies required the commodification of basic
services such as water, electricity and housing, inevitably placing a major burden on those
10 P. Chatteijee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (New York,
Columbia University Press, 2004); P. Chatteijee, Lineages of Political Society : Studies in Postcolonial Democracy
(New York, Columbia University Press, 201 1).
1 1 J. Scott, Domination and the Art of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990).
12 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and J. Muzondidya (eds), Redemptive or Grotesque Nationalism? Rethinking Contemporary
Politics in Zimbabwe (Oxford, Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, 201 1).
The Nation and its Politics 233
least able to afford such charges.13 Challenging the neoliberal economic and political order
thus becomes the only way through which a 'new* nation can be imagined by such excluded
citizens. Consequently, what becomes central in any discussion of the political economy
of the post-apartheid South African state is the way that neoliberal policies have produced
dissent from below, community resistance from the poor, and how this dissent and resistance
has created space for interaction between the state and the mass of citizens, albeit by proxy.
On the part of the poor, we see how everyday life intersects with the political when these
citizens continually confront and challenge authority, through, for example, the handling
and dumping of human waste. The events that involved the handling and dumping of human
waste, among other forms of protest, are historical and essential in understanding how the
nation is imagined. They illustrate how such practices have become critical in the formation
of a new form of Citizenship from the south', and how such a new form citizenship is being
enacted and articulated.
I would suggest that the existence of these two ways of imagining the nation is reflective of
the different ways through which people in contemporary South Africa have come to identify
themselves. In both cases (insurgent and explicit), the nation seems to live in people's minds
and also in their everyday practices of communion as influenced by historic experience. Both
'insurgent' and 'explicit' nationalisms are shaped by the various everyday formal and informal
practices that citizens are involved in as they negotiate the demands of modernity imposed
by democracy and neoliberal policies.14 For instance, explicit nationalism in the context of
South Africa has its genesis in the first few years after the demise of apartheid. It accompanied
democratic political liberation, and, as such, it brought about new ways and practices of
imagining the nation: for example, through formal or legal practices and processes, such as
voting in national and municipal elections, and through voluntary political and civic forms of
association. Thus 'explicit nationalism' is shaped by what Benedict Anderson terms 'bounded
serialities of governmentality'.15 These 'serialities' include governmental practices of ordering
and classifying 'populations', such as the modern census and electoral systems.16 As such,
this kind of national imagining contrasts with Anderson's notion of 'unbounded serialities of
governmentality', which he sees as unconstrained by formality, and so potentially liberating,
and which clearly is reflected in the manifestations of 'insurgent' forms of national imagining.
It is to such cases that we can now turn.
Decoding the So-Called Too' Protest Politics in South Africa:

Provisional Notes
Protest battles between poor residents and municipal authorities in Cape Town assumed a
somewhat different character when a bucket load of human waste was deposited at the departure
terminal of Cape Town International Airport in June 2013. This incident was followed by similar
events, where human waste was used to express generalised discontent with the sanitation
infrastructure in the townships of Cape Town. At one point, the Premier of the Western Cape
had raw sewage thrown at the bus in which she was travelling in Khayelitsha, an informal
settlement of Cape Town. This was followed by a more dramatic case, when protesters blocked
13 This argument is more germane in the recent work of Bond and Mottiar. The authors attribute the rise of service-
delivery-related protest in many South African communities to the adoption of neoliberal macro-economic and
micro-development after 1994. For a detailed discussion, see P. Bond and S. Mottiar, 'Movements, Protest and
Massacre in South Africa', Journal of Contemporary African Studies , 31, 2 (2013), pp. 283-302.
14 I am mindful of the different controversies that accompany the meaning of the term 'modernity' in current literature
and theoretical debates. For my more modest purpose here, I construe modernity in the context of democratic
liberation and the neoliberal (global) ordering of the nation state.
15 Benedict Anderson, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World (London, Verso,
1998), p. 29.
16 Ibid.
a busy national highway (the N2) with human waste, causing the highway to be temporarily
closed to traffic. Reflecting on this incident, a local news agency reported that
Protesters forced a truck driver off the road and used the vehicle to block all traffic. Human waste
was strewn across the road. Police managed to open the highway a half an hour later. The protesters
are calling for permanent brick toilets, instead of the portable flush ones that the city is rolling out.17
These protests were among several such cases, particularly in Cape Town, where the poor living
in informal settlements brought their struggle for dignity and meaningful recognition to the
attention of the media, the public and local authorities. Such struggles, involving human waste,
highlighted the intersection between morality and popular politics, as the 'other' South Africa,
which has not fully benefited from political modernity, took its case to the formal political
system. In doing so, this 'other' South Africa brought the professed ideals and promises of
democracy and political liberation into question.
The significance of these protests lies in their highlighting the extent to which grassroots
struggles in South Africa have not been given recognition, nor led to a meaningful redistribution
of resources. It is interesting to observe the various explanations put forward within the formal
political arena by agencies of explicit nationalism to account for the disposal of human waste by
the poor on public sites, buildings and other objects of national significance, such as airports,
government buildings and national highways. Thus the Democratic Alliance (DA), which runs
the city of Cape Town, interpreted such acts as part of a plan by the ANC to discredit the
DA-led provincial government and administration in the eyes of the poor, in order to weaken
electoral support for the DA in poor communities.18 Similarly, the opposition Azanian People's
Organisation (AZAPO) labelled the 'poo wars' in Cape Town as a symptom of the ANC's
political intolerance and its inability to coexist with other political parties. However, it has to
be stated that the ANC strongly condemned the dumping of human waste on public spaces of
such national significance as the airport and the provincial legislature, even though some of
its members were reported to have been involved.
There is an ongoing debate in South Africa on how these so-called 'poo protests' can best
be understood and theorised. Central to this debate are issues related to the meaning of these
protests, what they represent, and how they are linked to the everyday socio-economic realities
facing the poor. Writing in the Daily News , Steven Robins observes that the 'poo protests
targeted the Western Cape government's sanitation policies'.19 In an interesting analysis, Robins
argues that such policies are producing different forms of subjectivities, and the 'poo protests'
represent an extreme variant of such subjectivities at the level of ordinary citizens living in
the informal settlements. Seen in another way, the protests represented a new way of showing
discontent about a plethora of socio-economic, moral and political issues that bedevil poor
communities in South Africa. Thus Robins notes that the
poo protests are seemingly being driven by a number of grievances, including a labour dispute with
the Sanicare contractors responsible for sanitation delivery in informal settlements, the infamous
'bucket system' and the DA government's distribution of portable rather than flush toilets.20
Robin's further claims that 'poo protest' in Cape Town can be broadly understood as an example
of what he refers to as a 'politics of the spectacle'.21 However, such an analysis overlooks the
1 7 *Poo Protest Backs Up Cape Town Highway' , e News Channel Africa (eNCA) News, available at http://www.enca.
com/south-africa/poo-protest-backs-cape-town-highway, retrieved 16 August 2013.
18 For an analysis that considers the contrasting response of the ANC administration in the Free State to similar łpoo
protests', see Steven Robins, 'Slow Activism in Fast Times: Reflections on the Politics of Media Spectacles after
Apartheid', Journal of Southern African Studies , 40, 1 (2014), pp. 91-110.
19 S. Robins, 'How Poo Became a Political Issue', Daily News , Durban, 3 July 2013.
20 Ibid.
21 An argument further developed in Robins, 'Slow Activism in Fast Times'.
agency and political capacity of the poor to demand recognition as rights-bearing citizens. I
would argue that, although incidences of dumping human waste in public places does indeed
draw media attention to the protest, this is not the essence of the matter. Rather, those protesting
are driven by the most basic desire to have access to sanitation that accords with respect and
dignity. Reducing politics to a mere 'spectacle', particularly in the context of the poverty in
South Africa's informal settlements, risks underestimating what Appadurai calls the Capacity
to aspire' among members of the 'other' South Africa.22
The empirical, perhaps historical, significance of the struggles over basic sanitation in some
of Cape Town's informal settlements lies in the way such struggles (re)configure the meaning
of 'citizenship' in contemporary South Africa. First and foremost, we see from these everyday
struggles for basic necessities that citizenship is not a fixed, homogeneous category. In under-
resourced areas such as Makhaza, Philippi and Gugulethu, citizenship has become more fluid,
largely informed by the way marginalised members of society evaluate their deteriorating
everyday living conditions and the provision of services. All this is captured in the observation
of one interlocutor in Makhaza:
Every day we see our living conditions worsening. We cannot sit whilst conditions are worsening.
We are forced to take actions when we see that the DA23 municipality is failing to provide services
such as respectful toilets to our area. Our area cannot compare to the suburbs where they live. Our
message to them is simple: please make us feel that we are also part of this city.
During fieldwork in Makhaza, I met one young man who revealed that he actively participated
in these 'poo protests'.24 When asked what the protests meant to him, he had this to say:
When the government cease to be concerned about our dignity as people, then we have a duty to
remind them that we deserve to be treated as humans. Even if we live here, we also have a right
to our privacy; but these open toilets had meant that such a right was been violated. So we were
fighting for that right to visit the toilet without feelings of shame.
From my discussions with all those with whom I interacted over the course of my fieldwork,
it appears that at the centre of this (re)configuring of citizenship is the way neoliberal policies
have appropriated new forms of political imagery and subjectivity. The commodification of
water and basic sanitation delivery in poor communities in South Africa has meant that only a
few can afford even very simple flush toilets. This, coupled with the failure of local municipal
authorities to provide 'free' services, has produced resistance and new awareness from below.
The protests involving the dumping of human waste therefore suggests an emergent practice,
where the poor engage authority on the material, political and moral issues they identify as
central to their well-being as citizens, an engagement not bounded by the formal procedures
of official nationalism.
To understand fully the dynamics and moral character of popular contention in South Africa,
I take the reader to Makhaza informal settlement, where I have lived and where I conducted
22 See Appadurai, The Future As Cultural Fact.

23 The DA, the largest opposition party in South Africa, controls the city of Cape Town and is the governing party
of the Western Cape province. In the national elections in 2014, the DA obtained 22.22 per cent of the total vote,
compared with the ANC's 62.15 per cent. There is thus a persistent political tension - one that feeds into local
issues - inherent in the DA' s dominance in the Cape in the face of the ANC's overwhelming predominance in the
rest of the country. For a detailed summary of the 2014 election statistics and parliamentary seat allocation, see
Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), '2014 National and Provincial Elections: National',
available at http://www.elections.org.za/content/Elections/Results/2014-National-and-Provincial-Elections--
National -results/, retrieved 20 August 2014.
24 Fieldwork was conducted from March to September 2014 as part of a larger study on citizenship, state
governmentality and subaltern politics in contemporary South Africa. It was largely ethnographic, and aimed at
capturing the perspectives of the ordinary poor in South Africa on contemporary governance, state politics and the
post-apartheid citizenship condition. Interviews with ordinary citizens (including community activists) and long
periods of participant observation constituted the core of this fieldwork.
fieldwork during the first quarter of 2014. My experience living in this part of the country,
coupled with daily conversations with some of my interlocutors, reveals the intricate nature of a
'subaltern polities', at the centre of which is a quest for inclusion, moral recognition and dignity.
Neoliberal and global hegemonic processes have been singled out in some studies as acting to
erode and undermine the moral dignity of the marginalised poor in many urban communities,
including in South Africa.25 Such observations have opened new ways of thinking and theorising
social struggles of subaltern strata, not only as struggles over the redistribution of material
resources, but also about the need for moral recognition.26 In Cape Town, the construction by
the City of open toilets at the Makhaza informal settlement in Khayelitsha was met with outrage,
protest and legal challenges by residents, with the support of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL).
It was reported that residents had to cover themselves with blankets each time they visited the
toilet because the toilets were built without walls.27 Such open toilets were seen by residents
as a gross violation of their human right to moral dignity and recognition as 'proper citizens',
prompting protests to demand that the city of Cape Town recognise them as citizens worthy of
dignity. In a letter addressed to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), the
ANCYL, represented by Chumile Sali, wrote:
Our plea to the [SAHRC] is to compel the city council to build toilet walls to ensure the rights,
dignity, privacy and freedom of residents of Ward 95 are protected, to charge the council with viola-
tions of human rights and to take it to task for disregarding the constitution and the Bill of Rights.28
Clearly, the struggle in the Makhaza informal settlement was expressed not simply in terms
of improving services and amenities, but was largely constituted as a moral issue, suggesting
entitlements to citizenship: it was about poor citizens' need to be accorded a dignified status.
The SAHRC understood the matter in the same way. In passing judgment on the matter brought
forward by the ANCYL, Judge Nathan Erasmus declared that the open toilets in Makhaza
violated the constitutional rights of citizens to human dignity. He further ruled that the City
of Cape Town had iost sight of the constitutional rights and needs of the poor'.29 Judge
Erasmus's observation thus corresponded with that of residents of Makhaza, as exemplified
by one interlocutor, who observed:
We feel that we have been stripped of our African dignity by letting us use these toilets which
expose us. What kind of a toilet is that which exposes your nakedness? We need our dignity restored
and this can only be done through our refusal to use these toilets and even if it means destroying
them [open toilets].
What needs to be stressed here is the intersection between the provision of toilets and the
claim for dignity in Makhaza. The open toilet saga in Cape Town can best be understood as the
struggles of residents for the redistribution of resources (toilets) as intimately bound up with
demands for recognition as citizens (human dignity). It makes little sense to separate struggles
of recognition from those of redistribution, in this context. The protests over open toilets in
25 See, for example, Appadurai, The Future as Cultural Fact' P. Bond, Unsustainable South Africa: Environment,
Development and Social Protest (Pietermaritzburg, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2002); D. McKinley,
The Crisis of the Left in Contemporary South Africa', Mediations , 24, 1 (2008), pp. 68-89; J. Holston and A.
Appadurai, łCities and Citizenship', Public Culture , 8, 2 (1996), pp. 187-204.
26 This line of argument is seen m A. Honneth, Disrespect : The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (Cambodge,
Polity Press, 2007); N. Fraser and A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?: A Political-Philosophical Exchange
(London, Verso, 2003); A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts
(Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995).
27 Toilets without Walls - DA is Racist* , IOL News, available at https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/toilets-without-
walls-da-is-racist- 1.47 1250, retrieved 8 March 2013.
28 Statement by Chumile Sali, Deputy Chair, ANC Youth League, Dullah Omar region, 2010.
29 Statement by Judge Nathan Erasmus in the matter involving the ANC Youth League and the City of Cape Town, available
at http://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/text-of-makhaza-high-court-judgement, retrieved 21 July 2013.
Makhaza, and the protracted legal battles that accompanied such protests, sit at the intersection
between the need for 'redistribution' and the need for 'recognition*. This view is well captured
in Judge Erasmus's judgment, when he acknowledged this intersection by arguing that:
It is unfortunate that in the scramble for limited resources, which have to address the historical
imbalances and to cater for immediate needs, it has become the subject of political contest and
patronage as opposed to the responsible use thereof to fulfil the State's constitutional obligations.30
While moral demands for recognition and dignity can lead into community struggles
and political protest on their own, in the peculiar case of the open toilet saga in Cape Town
the protests by the residents of Makhaza were linked to questions of resource entitlements.
Significantly, therefore, they represented a form of collective agency and political subjectivity
that can be understood broadly as the 'capacity to lay a claim' to moral recognition and the
distribution of citizenship rights. It is the argument of this article that this form of political
subjectivity, construed as the capacity to lay a claim on the part of the poor residents of
South African informal settlements, such as Makhaza in Khayelitsha, presents a new way for
citizens to imagine themselves as belonging to a singular political community. This form of
political imagining is in sharp contrast to the usual, more explicit state nationalism highlighted
earlier. The burning of tyres by residents of Makhaza, and other forms of demonstrations that
followed the introduction or construction of open toilets, shows how state governmentality can
be challenged and negotiated with by poor citizens. It also represents the capacity that citizens
possess to act and challenge their condition of marginality, exclusion and lack of recognition, the
capacity that Arjun Appadurai describes as 'the capacity to aspire'.31 What we also see in places
such as Makhaza is how the subject is constituted through political acts such as popular protest,
street demonstrations and even taking recourse to formal juridical channels and processes.
From Makhaza, we can now turn to more recent but similar incidences of moral and
economic struggles that reflect subjective forms of political imagining that came in tandem
with neoliberal policies and political modernity. In so doing, the intention is to show how
human waste has become part of the political register of subaltern groups in poor townships,
symbolising the extent to which poor citizens view their human dignity as being impaired and
eroded by modern neoliberal policies in South Africa.
Between Sanitation and Politics: Can Human Waste be Properly

Constituted as a 'Political Issue'?
We threw poo in the airport because we wanted to show people the real Cape Town and the con-
ditions people live in. And we are not apologetic about what we did. Some people turned their
backs on us, but we made our point.32
Establishing a criterion of demarcation between the 'political' and 'non-political' tends to b

the hardest exercise for any political theorist. Be that as it may, human waste is the least of all
things that one can consider as constituting what can be described as 'political'. It becomes
essential to establish the threshold at which the 'non-political' becomes a 'political' issue.
Undeniably, in South Africa, the political significance of the 'poo protests' has been the way
that these protests have shown how what is taken for granted as mundane can ignite a rather
fierce and contentious interaction between poor citizens and public authorities. We can argue
that this is not only a story about the mundane becoming political, but a typical representatio
30 Ibid.
31 Appadurai, The Future as Cultural Fact.
32 Andile Lili, leader of the Ses'khona People's Movement, in an interview with Pharie Sefali and Alide Dasnois,
Ground Up , available at http://www.groundup.org.za/article/andile-lili-sets-sights-2016-elections_1984, retrieved
11 July 2014.
238 Tawanda Sy desky Nyawasha
of what, following Bayat,33 can be called 'a politics of necessity'. The protests in Cape Town
were driven by the need for a dignified life worthy of meaning and recognition. It is this
necessity that causes poor citizens to bear the stench coming from the human waste that they
transport to public places, highlighting the extent to which mundane elements of everyday life
can be transformed into highly charged political issues. Such a necessity goes far deeper than
any desire to create a media spectacle.
Human waste became a political issue in Cape Town in several ways. It became 'politicai',
firstly, because the act of dumping waste in places like the airport or legislature was a way
of setting out a long-standing moral and political claim, using a new way of challenging
political authority in informal settlements. As such, it could be seen as one of what Scott calls
the 'weapons of the weak'.34 Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the 'poo' protests that
rocked Cape Town became political in that they created a political space for the contestation
of dignity and the moral recognition of those living in the 'other' South Africa, which had yet
to benefit from political modernity and democratic liberation. Here the comment (set out at the
beginning of this section) by Andile, leader of the Ses'khona Peoples Movement, is instructive
and illuminating. Crucially, for Andile, dumping waste was another way of showing 'people
the real Cape Town and the conditions people live in'.35 This response is the more striking for
the way it conjures up the idea that 'another Cape Town' exists and is largely unknown to those
who do not live in it. Central to Andile's claim is that 'foreigners view Cape Town as a perfect
city, but they do not know that poor people in the city are suffering and are provided with
bad services'.36 One can infer from Andile's response that engaging in 'poo protest' activities
opened the space to highlight the inherent contradictions and fragilities of a neoliberal post-
apartheid city.
Andile's response - and those of some of my other interlocutors - suggests that the use
of human waste in the social and political struggles of the poor in Cape Town served both a
symbolic and an instrumental function in the political imaginations of the poor. Those who
engaged in such acts risked both political reprisals and health hazards caused by handling and
transporting human waste. The dumping and use of human waste as a political strategy for
showing discontent with the project of modernity among those living in informal settlements
of Cape Town is among the various means through which this 'other' nation is imagined,
created and even idealised. In this regard, this 'other' nation is imagined or created through
acts of subjectivity filled, in most cases, with emotions and affect: means somewhat different
from Anderson's 1982 observation about 'print nationalism' and the way in which print
created a homogeneous political community. In the case of the poor in South Africa, it
appears that the conventional forms of politics and representation are inadequate spaces of
expression. Thus in order freely to express their needs for recognition and redistribution,
those living in informal settlements are devising new ways, which might seem 'uncivil', as
in this instance.
Such spaces of contestation are what we can broadly refer to as 'invented spaces of
participation'.37 By dumping human waste in places such as the airport and government
offices, the poor have shown, firstly, their discontent with formal political mechanisms of
governance, and, most importantly, their capacity to lay claim to rights that are not recognised.
33 A. Bayat. 'From "Dangerous Classes" to "Quiet Rebels": Politics of the Urban Subaltern in the Global South',
International Sociology , 15, 3 (2000), pp. 533-57.
34 See J. Scott, Weapons of the Weak : Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1985).
35 Andile, interview with Pharie Sefali and Alide Dasnois, 1 1 July 2014.
36 Ibid.
37 For a detailed discussion on this notion, see, for example, A. Cornwall, 'Making Spaces, Changing Places: Situating
Participation in Development', IDS Working /toper No. 173 (University of Sussex, Institute of Development Studies,
2002). See also A. Cornwall and V.S. Coelho (eds), Spaces for Change ?The Politics of Participation in New
Democratic Arenas (London, Zed Books, 2007).
We observe in South Africa, through grassroots protests, simply how citizen-subject positions
are being formed when the poor contest their social exclusion. We also see the significance of
'intersubjective recognition', when these protesters come together as a group and protest against
the delivery of poor sanitation in informal settlements. Moreover, through alliances with other
organisations - here, for example, the ANCYL - the poor are able to explore both legal and
extra-legal options that might assist in their quest for dignity and recognition. If their politics
of handling and dumping human waste appears 'dirty' to outsiders, such politics is considered
necessary as a means to bring their needs for recognition to the attention of government. This
'dirty' way of doing politics has managed successfully to demystify the dominant assumption
in the literature on popular protest in South Africa, the assumption that protest in townships
and informal settlements is largely about the distribution of resources.38 The 'poo protests' have
managed to capture and reflect on the moral character of popular struggles in South Africa.
Theoretically, such protests call for the need to reconcile arguments that popular struggles
are predominantly about the redistribution of resources with a recognition of the moral claims
inherent in popular politics.39 Given the connection between morality and politics invoked by
these protests, involving the dumping of human waste, can we then argue that incivility and
illegality are defining characteristics of a form of politics practised at the margins of society
in contemporary South Africa? If not, how then can we locate the place of civility or morality
within subaltern politics? Here the response from one of my interlocutors in Makhaza is perhaps
illuminating and instructive:
We do these things because we feel we have been humiliated. What is worse: carrying 'poo' and
being seen by your own children as you relieve yourself in an open toilet? All we want is for the
City of Cape Town to have the decency of giving us the respect we have as people. I know it's
illegal to dump human waste but what do they want us to do? If they arrest us, we will find ways
of speaking the truth.
Mapping the Shifting Contours of Subaltern Politics in Contemporary

Cape Town
Subaltern struggles, such as those represented by Cape Town's 'poo protests', occur within
and outside the confines of the law. Reading through and following the events surrounding
these struggles, it becomes clear that this 'politics of the poor' occurs between the legal and
illegal (and also between the moral and what some might consider the immoral). In this case,
the formation of the Ses'khona People's Movement40 represents the point at which legality
intersects with illegality. Both before and after its inception, the protests and the movement used
both legal and illegal methods of contesting the material, social and moral conditions that its
members faced in their everyday lives. Of note is the way the members of this movement gather
at the Bellville magistrates' courts in support of the their leaders when the latter are accused
by the state of contravening municipal bye-laws on waste removal, and also of conspiring to
incite violence. In one of the court sessions that I attended, members of the Ses'khona Peoples'
Movement clashed with police outside the court when the police attempted to apprehend one
38 See, for example, P. Alexander, 'Rebellion of the Poor: South Africa's Service Delivery Protests - A Preliminary
Analysis', Review of African Political Economy , 37, 123 (2010), pp. 25-40; S. Booysen, 'With the Ballot and Brick:
The Politics of Attaining Service Delivery', Progress in Development Studies, 7, 1 (2007), pp. 21-32; F. Barchiesi,
'Classes, Multitudes and the Politics of Community Movements in Post- Apartheid South Africa', in N.C. Gibson
(ed.), Challenging Hegemony: Social Movements and the Quest for a New Humanism in Post-Apartheid South
Africa (Asmara, Africa World Press, 2006), p. 161.
39 See, for example, Honneth, Disrespect ; Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?
40 The dumping of human waste at Cape Town International Airport and other areas within the city was later followed
by a series of events in which the 'poo' -related struggles were transformed into a fully fledged social movement
organisation known as Ses'khona People's Movement, led by Andili Lili and Loyiso Nkohla, two men known as
the brains behind the 'poo protests' in Cape Town.
of their leaders, who had jumped on top of a police vehicle. In turn, some members were
arrested and charged with public violence. What stood out during this incident were the spacio-
temporal dimensions of popular contention and its shifting terrains - from legal to illegal to,
sometimes, anarchy). The members of the Ses'khona Peoples' Movement had, on the day in
question, come to court in their numbers to 'observe and respect' the proceedings of the court,
but proceedings outside quickly gave way to anger and lawlessness. The court, just like the
airport or the provincial legislature where human waste was dumped, became what might be
called 'a local space for popular dissent' and public contestation. Popular politics, in the context
of the poor contesting their material living conditions, assumed a new character where it was
being played out in unconventional 'local' and 'national' spaces. For the poor in Cape Town,
spaces such as the airport, the courts and the legislature ceased to be places characterised by
decency, formality or morality, becoming instead spaces through which community grievances
were being aired and ultimately contained.
The comparative and empirical significance of the struggles in places such as Makhaza lies
in the fact that they highlight how issues of 'morality' have become crucial in triggering popular
discontent in several poor communities. Above all, the 'poo protests' in Cape Town exemplify
how the interconnected tensions around issues of 'redistribution' and 'dignity' have become
sources (sites) of subaltern struggles in contemporary South Africa. The subaltern struggles
of the poor in Cape Town exemplify how the 'small voices' in this historical conjuncture
have become a vibrant source of resistance for marginalised groups in society. Examining
and locating the historical, disciplinary or epistemological transformative potential of such
groups has been a central focus of subaltern scholars.41 Ranajit Guha, for instance, shows
how subordinated groups in India are integral in their critique of dominant social and political
arrangements.42 Although it is too early to write about the tangible outcomes of the Cape Town
protests, it is safe to say that, so far, this form of politics has shown that the poor are an active
historical force and a source of resistance to, and critique of, power. For this reason, the 'poo
protesters' can be construed as a special category of the urban poor, who seek to reconfigure
citizenship by laying claims to fundamental rights, such as the right to proper and dignified
sanitation.
In trying to understand both the insurgent and explicit forms of political imagining in
South Africa, however, it would be foolhardy to assume that the divide between these forms of
nationalism is constant and clear-cut . For all their anger, those poor citizens in Makhaza went
out in their numbers to vote during the elections in May 2014. Moreover, the leaders of the
Ses'khona Peoples Movement behind the 'poo protests' openly pledged their support for the
ANC and urged their members to vote for the ANC. This underscores the fact that sometimes,
when it suits them (and perhaps when they can), the poor participate within both realms of
political imagining. This political agency is also seen in the ability of marginalised groups
sometimes to seek alliances with political organizations - especially near elections - and to
appeal to the conscience of such organizations to attend to their grievances. In his interview
with Pharie Sefali and Alide Dasnois,43 Andile explained: '[w]e partner with any organisation
or political party that is interested in benefiting the poor people in our country'.44
41 My use of the term Subaltern' rests heavily on the huge volume of work by the scholars (many working in the
Indian sub-continent) who constitute what has been called 'subaltern studies' . Scholars such as Spivak, Chakrabarty,
Guha and Chatteijee are among those who have been central in theorising the politics of the subaltern.
42 See Ranajit Guha, 'The Small Voice of History , in Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarty (eds), Subaltern Studies
IX: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1994).
43 See http://www.groundup.org.za/article/andile-lili-sets-sights-20 1 6-elections_ 1 984.
44 The comment highlights the cross-cutting affinities of the politics of the poor in Cape Town. It speaks to the way m
which the politics of the poor have become pragmatically organised around the need to attend to everyday struggles.
This (partnership 'with any organisation'), however, does not signal a detachment from the historical political
allegiance that most of the citizens with whom I interacted in Cape Town had for the ruling ANC.
Conclusion
This article has reflected on the two dominant forms of political imagining existing side by side
in post-apartheid South Africa. It has shown how political modernity and its accompanying
processes have contributed in the imagining of the nation, particularly by poor citizens living
in informal settlements. 'Explicit nationalism' and 'insurgent nationalism', as I have referred to
the forms of imagining the nation, show how political modernity is still seen as an incomplete
project by those who continue to struggle for the most basic necessities of life in the 'other'
South Africa. The two 'nationalisms' have also shown how the discontents that accompany
the project of modernity have produced new forms of political subjectivities that are essential
in fostering a rather informal (insurgent) way of imagining the nation. The 'poo protests' in
Cape Town represent not only a disillusionment with political modernity as delivered through
explicit nationalism, but the existence of everyday forms of political resistance devised by
those living in the margins of the new political order. What stands out from these everyday
subaltern practices is the capacity that the poor possess to challenge their isolation, exclusion
and lack of recognition. Nor are these everyday forms of politics simply a representation of
what can be called a 'politics of the spectacle'. Rather, the effects of such everyday practices,
typified by the dumping of human waste in this context, in creating new forms of subjectivity
and imagining are apparent.
It is hoped that this article will be a precursor to a larger study that will be able to explore
the political outcomes of such forms of everyday political practices in South Africa and their
potential for creating a new kind of subjectivity. For the present, we can argue that political
subjectivity, understood as the political capacity to lay a claim to basic citizenship rights,
remains a significant way through which the 'other' nation is imagined in contemporary South
Africa. Even though the use of human waste as a repertoire of contention might not make sense
to an outside observer, it has both a symbolic and instrumental meaning to those involved in
such an action, and others who imagine themselves as facing the same struggles for moral
dignity in the different informal settlements and townships of South Africa. As an everyday
form of political practice by those living on the margins of the social, economic and political
order, 'poo' politics were largely driven by the necessity to survive and lead a more dignified
life. The political significance of such a politics lies in the way it reflects the desire and capacity
to aspire and be recognised as fully fledged citizens. Importantly, the protests highlight the
disjuncture between political liberation and socio-economic emancipation, particularly for
those living in the 'other South Africa'. Such everyday informal political practice is the way
in which poor citizens devise unconventional mechanisms of contesting authority, and make a
claim to what they consider as rightfully belonging to them, which is denied by unresponsive
state functionaries. The 'poo' battles in Cape Town illustrate how the 'other' nation exists and
lives in the minds of the poor, and how this political imagining is conditioned by the everyday
challenges of poverty and exclusion. These protests have also mapped out the contours of
subaltern politics in Cape Town, as it radiates between the conventional and the unconventional,
the legal and illegal, and, most notably, the moral and the immoral.
Acknowledgements
An earlier draft of this article was presented at a seminar hosted by the Department of
Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, on 21 August 2014. 1 am grate-
ful for all comments and suggestions from those who participated in the seminar. Thanks to
Zaynab Bernoussi, who gave crucial comments on earlier drafts. All the infelicities in the overall
argument, however, remain solely mine, and I bear full responsibility.
Tawanda Sydesky Nyawasha

Department of Sociology , University of Limpopo , Xl 106, Sovenga 0727 , South Africa ;
Department of Sociology, University of Hong Kong , Centennial Campus , //on# China.
E-mail: nyawasha@gmail.com

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The Nation and its Politics: Discussing Political Modernity in the 'Other' South Africa

Author(s): Tawanda Sydesky Nyawasha

The Nation and its Politics: Discussing

Tawanda Sydesky Nyawasha

© 2016 The Editorial Board of the Journal of Southern African Studies

3 T. Mbeki, 'Reconciliation and Nation Building', available at http://www.unisa.ac.za/contents/colleges/docs/1998/

'Insurgent Nationalism' and 'Explicit Nationalism': Two Domains of

Decoding the So-Called Too' Protest Politics in South Africa:

22 See Appadurai, The Future As Cultural Fact.

Between Sanitation and Politics: Can Human Waste be Properly

Establishing a criterion of demarcation between the 'political' and 'non-political' tends to b

Mapping the Shifting Contours of Subaltern Politics in Contemporary

Tawanda Sydesky Nyawasha

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