Sunday 16 May 2010

Jo'burg - Guy Tillim


The World Cup is set to grace South Africa in less than a month's time. The Southern African nation has invested an estimated US$2 billion to hold the privilege. The government argue that the investment has already benefited the nation through the creation of jobs, the improvement of infrastructure and the enhanced image of a country associated with violence, crime, drug cartels and corruption. Like the Senegalese statue in the north of the continent, the World Cup superstructures in the far south were constructed with images of African progress, development and modernity in mind.

However, it is yet to be seen how much benefit World Cup revenues will bring to the average citizen of South Africa. To start, ticket sales have been poor with bookings running at only half the anticipated level. Like Senegal’s $27 million statue, few of the incurred costs were seen to benefit local inhabitants. South Africa too, is yet to see much by way of ‘trickle-down’ benefit to the poor. Many of the stadium sites have involved the forcible eviction of persons unfortunate enough to reside on a construction blueprint. For example, in Cape Town, entire communities have been resettled to Blikkiesdorp, a ‘temporary resettlement camp’ which now houses some 15, 000 people and has been likened by residents to concentration camps with concrete walls, numbered sheds and little greenery.

This bears striking similarity to what is seen in Guy Tillim’s Jo’Burg, where the state has begun to close some of the city’s housing blocs in dire need of repair and with unpaid utility bills. With the end of apartheid and the removal of the Group Areas Act in the mid-1990s, white residents fled the city centre, leaving their flats to be managed by letting agents. In the hope of better lives and business opportunities, black residents and owners of small businesses arrived. However, in most cases ‘agents were corrupt, did not pay the utilities, and disappeared with the money’ (Guy Tillim). This set in motion the decay of the housing blocs where, in the face of poverty, communal responsibilities were not enacted - windows were left broken and lift shafts became rubbish bins. The buildings started to resemble fire hazards and were ugly blots on capital of the rainbow nation’s urban development schemes. The state began to employ mercenary police forces (as seen in Louis Theroux’s documentary below) to evict illegally occupied flats where residents often paid rent to agents not in ownership of the property and utility bills remained unpaid.

2008 saw a murderous revolt by some of these homeless evictees when a wave of violence was unleashed on immigrants from neighbouring African states (often a result of political oppression, war and famine) who became the scapegoats for lack of housing and unemployment. Immigrants were reported having tyres straddled around their chests and burned.

The propitious end of apartheid promised greater equality, increased living standards and equitable development. However, this manifested into little more than formal political opportunity and equality of voting power during elections. The ANC, lead by Nelson Mandela, came under pressure to prove it could ‘govern with sound macroeconomic policies’ (Naomi Klein). It became clear ‘that if Mandela attempted genuine redistribution of wealth, the international markets would retaliate’ (.ibid). Instead of growth and development through increased redistribution and equality of economic opportunity, South Africa was hit by a wave of ‘mass privatizations, lay-offs and wage cuts in the public sector [and] corporate tax cuts' (.ibid).

The result of the wave of financial liberalisation was disastrous: half million jobs have been lost since 1993; wages for the poorest 40% have dropped by 21%; poor areas have seen their utility costs rocket (water cost has increased 55% and electricity 400%). South Africa has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world, where 60% of the population earn less than US$7,000 and the top 2.2% earn in excess of US$50,000 (UNDP). Household surveys reveal 1.5 million houses to have been built between 1994 and 2003. However, despite an absolute increase in housing, about 4.1 million households are living in informal, traditional or backyard dwellings. The housing backlog has also increased from about 178,000 to 208,000 per annum. As award winning South African playwright, Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom notes, ‘what use is freedom when you don’t have the means to live freely?’.

While racial apartheid ended in 1994, a new generation of economic apartheid has begun. The needs of the state have become mired by the aspirations of modernity, development and growth with few ‘trickle-down’ benefits. The outcome of South Africa's development path will decide ‘whether or not Johannesburg becomes, again, a city of exclusion’ (Guy Tillim). Just as democracy was purported to have the ability to fix apartheid South Africa; the World Cup is unlikely to improve the economic situation and dire poverty of South Africa’s poorest.

Guy Tillim won the Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2005 for the "Jo'burg" series.

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