CONFERENCE | Making human settlements and public spaces in contexts of migrancy and xenophobia

[A panel discussion at the conference "RISE AFRICA 2022: Human Rights in the context of African Cities", 23-25 May 2022]

Excerpt:

"Housing shortage is a key issue in virtually all the major cities of the continent which are urbanising. And they're all going to be faced, and already facing, housing shortages.

Within the the South African context, the main model we have is housing mega-projects - huge projects that are usually built on the periphery of cities by and large. That is where they have been built over the last decades. And they come with many challenges: they are far away from economic opportunities; they require lengthy travel distances; there are all the expenses that come with living so far away; and not living in a livable environment where there are social resources, cultural resources, and economic opportunities, etc. So that model does not work very efficiently. And we all know this already. So we are struggling to come up with new new solutions and strategies.

Now, the way people build housing themselves in informal settlements, or generally known as slums, people find spaces within the city. This is especially so for migrants, because those are the first places they go to. Those are the low-income places where you don't have to spend a fortune for rental. Those become "arrival cities". Those informal settlements are often on the periphery of cities generally.

And we have not yet learned what we can learn from so-called 'informal' processes. How we can develop other kinds of housing solutions that are not necessarily top-down, that are not dependent on the big corporations' construction materials, but rather are trying to understand local systems and working with those informal processes. We haven't yet really found a way to do that. And so we haven't really been able to meet the multiple challenges that we face.

And human settlements are not just about producing a shelter for people. It's about producing a living environment with all of its complexities - social, cultural, economic, familial. And so the issue of migrancy, along with xenophobia and xenophobic violence, is also part of creating human settlements. In South Africa, even the citizens don't really know how to live with one another because of our long centuries-old colonial history, which we share with other parts of the continent. And our apartheid history is also shared with settler societies in other parts of the continent. Apartheid is not so much a unique South African phenomenon. In the early part of the 20th century apartheid was, as some scholars have described it, almost a continent-wide African phenomenon in urban spaces. So human settlements are also about this. How do citizens even live with one another? How do we create social cohesion among citizens? And then the migrancy issues are even another layer - how do we live with people that have come from other parts of the country as internal migrants, or external migrants from beyond the border.

So there are so many challenges, and we haven't yet even developed on scale the strategies to deal with them. But those are some of the issues that human settlements have to address, that it's not just about shelter. Rather, it is about where you locate those settlements, where you build them, does it provide economic opportunities, how does it facilitate and help people to live together both among citizens and also amongst migrants, and is it close to economic opportunities where people can actually have a dignified life.

Three of the most fundamental things that we need to live in a humane way is family, food, and safety. All human beings need these things. And we are struggling to even fulfil those basic dimensions of dignity and respect that we need to have in the city. And human settlements - the way we understand them and how we build strategies - has to accommodate all of those things and not work against them."

The full conference session is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV3d00UNijg

Further information: