Victoria Mxenge: a Story About More Than Women Building Their Community

Victoria Mxenge: a Story About More Than WomenBuilding Their Community

Caroline Newton

Published online: 27 April 2012# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract During the 1990s, a small group of women constructed 148 houses near thetownships of Gugulethu and Nyanga in Cape Town. The small neighbourhoodbecame the flagship project of the South African Homeless People's Federation(SAHPF), and the government used the insights of these women to develop theirPeople's Housing Process (PHP) housing framework. In this contribution, their storyis told, and in explaining why these women were so successful, we use the theoreticalconcepts of Pierre Bourdieu and pay specific attention to the changed meaning ofpower. The paper argues that the coinciding of a “vacuum” in the planning field, thetransition in South Africa to a democratic state and the personal motivation of thewomen of Victoria Mxenge created a momentum that enabled them to influencegovernmental policies on a national scale.

Keywords Power . Gender . Urban planning . Grassroots movements . SouthAfrica . Bourdieu

Introduction: Putting Power Into Context

In this paper, we explore and unravel the success of a group of woman whosolved their own housing problem during the transition period in South Africa,and by doing so, they managed to uplift themselves from their underprivilegedposition in society. These women even influenced the urban planning field,while their initial drive was to improve the more general life quality of theirhousehold and in particular that of their children. The importance of this projecton an institutional level has been tackled substantially in other contributions(e.g. Ismail 2000; Bolnick 1997; Bauman and Mitlin 2003; Bauman et al. 2004;Jacobs 2011 and others); here, we tell the story with a the focus on the women

Urban Forum (2012) 23:197–207DOI 10.1007/s12132-012-9150-4

C. Newton (*)Sint-Lucas School of Architecture, partner in the K.U. Leuven Association, Brussels, Belgiume-mail: [email protected]

themselves and their engagement with their local neighbourhood, and using theory,we will give an explanation of why and how the project could be so influential on anational level. Although they are not educated planners or architects and despite thefact that they face a lot of problems in fulfilling their basic material needs and thatthey also form a socially marginalised group, they succeeded in their ambitiousproject.

In explaining why these women were so successful, we use the theoretical con-cepts of Pierre Bourdieu and pay specific attention to the changed meaning of power,whereby we rely on a well-focused screening of theoretical insights about power, putforward by Judith Butler, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu.1 Consequently, westress that “the exercise of power consists in guiding the possibility of conduct andputting in order the possible outcome” (Foucault 1982, 789). Thus, we understandpower as a way to “guide” society in a certain way; this also implies that besides agovernment, grassroots movements also have the possibility to influence govern-ments (on different scales) and thus help shape the society and its organisation atlarge; the story of Victoria Mxenge will illustrate this.

Attention will, in the next section, be paid to the theoretical efforts of PierreBourdieu, in particular to his findings about the role of physical space and theexertion of symbolic violence and, secondly, his field theory. Both will be linked tothe case study in a final explanatory conclusion. The empirical work in the VictoriaMxenge Township in Cape Town is illustrated in the third part.

Bourdieu

The work of Pierre Bourdieu is not bounded by the edges of any scientific discipline anddiscusses subjects from economic change and social inequality to philosophy and theworld of arts. The key theme throughout his oeuvre is the stratification of society and hisquest to uncover the mechanisms that are underneath (De Jong 1997, 321). Bourdieualso takes some special interest in the role physical space plays in preserving thissocial stratification. This makes his concepts about space and the “make-ability” ofsociety a useful framework for the analysis of the case in this paper.

Bourdieu About Our Society and the Role of Physical Space

In “Site Effects” (1999), Bourdieu speaks about the role of physical space. Hestates that there is a strong relationship between the structure of our social realityand the structure of physical space (Bourdieu 1999, 123). A “place” is thespontaneous symbolisation of the social space that inhabits it. Physical distancesare the reflection of the distances within social space: the place an individual takeswithin the social hierarchy can be deducted from the place he takes within thephysical space and the relative distances to other places or individuals (Bourdieu1999, 123–124). Through this analysis, Bourdieu also gives us an explanation for theinertia of social structures: “Part of the ‘inertia’ of the structures of social space resultsfrom the fact that they are inscribed in physical space and cannot be modified except

1 In this contribution, we will focus on Bourdieu.

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by a ‘work of transplantation’, a moving of things and an uprooting or deporting ofpeople, which itself presupposes extremely difficult and costly social transforma-tions” (Bourdieu 1999, 124). People and commodities are spread through physicalspace. The particularities of a place become apparent through the superposition ofdifferent layers: concentrations of scarce goods will become visible at certain sites.These places differ very strongly with neighbourhoods where one will find a con-centration of the deprived and undesirable goods and activities. Hence, social andeconomic power relations are inscribed in physical space. This relation betweenspatial and social structures is dialectical. This was already argued by Massey(1979, 1984; see also Meert 2000 for an application) when she stated that subsequentmacro-economic processes deposit and create spatial structures. These geographicalstructures not only overwrite each other through history, they are also able toinfluence for instance new economic investments in certain areas. Hence, the physicalspatial structure mutually influences the social realm. In Bourdieu's approach, theinfluence of space on the social happens in a way that goes unperceived by people: itis incorporated within their minds through an endless confrontation with the physicalspatial distances, which are the reflection of the social structure of society. Or inBourdieu's words: “Because social space is inscribed at once in spatial structures andin the mental structures that are partly produced by the incorporation of thesestructures, space is one of the sites where power is asserted and exercised, and, nodoubt in its subtlest form, as symbolic violence that goes unperceived as violence.Architectural spaces address mute injections directly to the body and, just as surely ascourt etiquette, obtain from it the reverence and respect born of distance, or better yet,from being far away, at a respectful distance” (Bourdieu 1999, 126).

The segregated apartheid city is exemplary to illustrate Bourdieu's point, as the useof space and the organisation of a city are a tool to maintain and even enhance thepower of the elite. Without a doubt, people have, through their positions in physicalspace, more or less access to scarce commodities. So there is a struggle to controlspace, and it should not come as a surprise that deprived groups are kept at a distanceby the small elite in power. This way, spatial mobility becomes an important indicatorfor the success of an actor (Bourdieu 1999). Bourdieu also states that an individualcan hardly liberate himself from the negative influence of his own neighbourhood, hisown habitat, on his life. As we will argue further in this paper, small-scale actions inthe field of urban planning may alter to some degree the existing power relations in agiven society. To be able to develop this statement, we have first to clarify Bourdieu'sfield concept.

Bourdieu's Field Theory

Bourdieu (1989) defines (social) fields as structured spaces, in which the character-istics of the different positions are the result of their specific place within that field;there are universal “field laws” which you can find in any field, e.g. the political field,the field of arts, but also the field we focus on in this paper: that of urban planning andhousing. We know that in every field, there is a power struggle between the new-comers and the power elite. Furthermore, every field is defined through specific goalsand objectives ascribed to that field. A field will only work if there are some profits atstake for which the different actors are willing to play the game. To play, they have to

Victoria Mxenge: a Story About More Than Women 199

rely on their knowledge they have acquired during their socialisation (Bourdieu 1990,31). The structure of a field, at any giving moment, is the situation of the powerrelations between the participating actors. These actors are investing their differentsorts of capital2 in order to move up and to become the authorities within the givenfield.

The dominant groups within the field will try to maintain control by usingconservative strategies, focused on preserving traditional thought. If the newcomerswant to contest these ideas, they will use their own strategies, but they first need toacquire the knowledge and the insights into the rules of the field (Bourdieu 1989).“Field effects” emerge from the moment one cannot understand phenomena withoutknowing and understanding the history of the given field. Nevertheless, Bourdieu(1989) stresses that the core of a philosophical, political strategy cannot be developedthrough cynical calculation or a conscious maximization of profits, but “through anunconscious relation between habitus and field”. This implies that the habitus3

enables the actor to use strategies to pursue his objectives, without having designedthose strategies specifically for that purpose. Our case study will show that thisstatement also bears on urban planning.

The Power of Women Building Their Own Township

South Africa's complex society is rooted in the country's successive periods ofcolonisation, during which the main trains of thought that would go on to shape thecountry's appearance, both metaphorically as well as physically, were established. In1948, the National Party came into power, and “apartheid” became the guidingpolitical principle. The scale and ruthlessness of segregation policies reachedpreviously unknown heights. During the 1980s, the principles of apartheid werebecoming unsupportable and policies and legislation began to be contestedmore openly; furthermore, the choices made under apartheid about how to“urbanise the cities” had led to a severe housing crisis by the mid 1980s. Itis in this turbulent period, just before Nelson Mandela became the first dem-ocratically elected president in 1994, that the story of Victoria Mxenge unrolls.The Cape Town area is one of South Africa's oldest and fastest growing regions,and, as most South African cities, it is characterised by a strong spatial segregation ofthe different population groups. The Cape Flats region is home to most of CapeTown's black and coloured populations and also the home of the Victoria Mxengeneighbourhood.

The First Steps in Building a Network

In January 1992, Patricia Matolengwe (PM), a local leader for the ANC Women'sLeague, participated in a workshop on self-help housing, organised by the People's

2 For an elaboration on Bourdieu's conceptualisation of social, cultural, and other forms of capital, I refer toBourdieu (1986).3 For Bourdieu, the habitus is a “mental structure” that has developed during socialisation in everyindividual's mind and which enables the individual to both understand the social world as it appears tohim/her and to function within it.

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Dialogue (PD). During this meeting, she became inspired by Mahila Milan, awomen's savings group from India who had been building their own houses before.Back in Khayelitsha, where she was living at that time, she managed to engageseveral women and succeeded in mobilising an initial group of 12 women, allneighbours and acquaintances. They started the Victoria Mxenge Housing SavingScheme on a very small scale and in a very personal manner, as every day, the womanresponsible for collecting the money went by every house to gather the daily savings.In this way, people knew each other personally, and the group became very close.After the completion of the houses, the saving scheme was kept up and now functionsas a “social security system” from which the women can borrow money if they needit, a system commonly known as stokvel.

Just as Patricia, most of these women were single mothers, who did not wantto raise their children in the informal settlement. The saving scheme was not aneasy undertaking, being responsible for at least three dependent persons in thehousehold and with a monthly income below R800 (approx. $100). Neverthe-less, slowly, their savings started to grow, and other individuals also started tohave faith in the project. By 1997, the group grew to 286 members of which280 were women. Part of the savings went to the technical schooling for someof them. One of the biggest challenges, however, was to acquire land and toaccess housing resources (such as subsidies). In 1993, PD informed the womenabout a piece of land that was owned by the Catholic Welfare and Develop-ment and which was going to be donated. The women had to compete againstother interested organisations and NGOs, but eventually, they became therecipients. Once they owned the 36 ha, they were assisted by PD, and throughthe network, established by the SAHPF, they were offered experiences andinsights from other communities and experts (Chikwanha 2005; Khan and Pie-terse 2004; People's Dialogue 1994, personal communications with PM).

An important element in this specific case is the fact that, although the storyof Victoria Mxenge sounds like a fairytale, it actually has a solid legalfoundation. The women wanted to build approximately 148 individual houseson the piece of land. Yet, instead of dividing the land into 148 plots with individualtitle deeds, the women started a communal property association (The “VictoriaMxenge Housing and Development Association”) which owned the land and inwhich all members had a share (personal communications with PM).

Eventually, the neighbourhood became “the benchmark against which all othergroups measure progress” (Ismail 2000; People's Dialogue 1994). Because of theirspecific approach and not following government's regulations, they had to wait foryears before receiving the housing subsidy they were entitled to. To cover this period,they could access loans from the uTshani fund. Through time, additional functionsemerged. When the women got started, they experienced that it was cheaper to maketheir own bricks; consequently, they started a small brick “factory”. After finishingthe houses, this function became obsolete, so new ideas grew and developed (e.g.every week, a few of the women go to the city centre to look for jobs for all theunemployed members, which proved to be a successful strategy as they already got acontract for the men to work for the forestry department, while for the youth, theynegotiated contracts to work as parking attendants in the city) (personal communi-cations with PM).


Organisational Conflict Clouds the Water

During the fieldwork in 2005, the project was experiencing difficulties on an organ-isational level. There were a number of problems between the women from VictoriaMxenge (some of them important leaders in the SAHPF) and the staff and leadersfrom PD. Furthermore, PD was facing extreme financial problems and eventuallyclosed down in 2005. The SAHPF, PD and uTshani took a great start during the1990s, with a lot of enthusiastic people, realising more than 15,000 qualitativedwellings. As time went by, things started to demise, and in the small neighbourhoodas well, things were not kept up as they were during the initial phase (uTshani 2002).

All of these tensions eventually led to the demise of the relationship between thewomen of VictoriaMxenge and the alliance of the SAHPF (now renamed the Federationof the Urban Poor), PD and uTshani. These difficulties were also the key reason for thepath that the women chose to follow from 2005 onwards, when the decisionwas taken tofocus upon their initial group and their children, since they were what had driven themfrom the start, or as one of the oldest members explained:

I came to Victoria Mxenge and see my children living in a brick house and notin a shack. I wish that before I die I can see my kids getting education and goingto university. (N, 62 years)

This citation is exemplary for the motivation behind the initiative. The engagementof the women has to be understood on the basis of their motherhood and their desireto take care of their children. The sacrifices they have made in the short term havebeen, and will be, repaid with benefits for their children in the future.

The dialectic relationship between the housing project and social networkshas been the starting point for elaborate thoughts on the meaning of home andcare. In Victoria Mxenge, the dialectics are manifest. The whole project startedfrom a small local social network (see Fig. 1, showing the growth of the network)of a fewwomenwho shared the same experiences and the same living environment. Theyhad one major goal in their lives, which was to change their living conditions so that theirchildren would have a better future. And they wanted to achieve this by relocating fromthe squatter settlement in Khayelitsha and moving into better houses. The close relation-ship between the notions of “care”, “home”/“house” (e.g. Gurney 1997; Arias 1993) andthe “feminine” is clearly highlighted here, and it might not come as a surprise that thewomen wanted to realise their goals through a housing project.

Jumping Scales

The story of these women developed into a (inter)national success. They got in touchwith similar projects through the South African Homeless People's Federation. In thisway, they succeeded to stand together as a strong collective and were able to forcedown their communal demands (Wilson and Lowery 2003).

In 1998, the National Housing Policy adopted the People's Housing Process (PHP)framework, which is a subsidy mechanism for self-help housing projects. Amongstother sources of inspiration, they convened with the key women of Victoria Mxenge

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to learn from their experience (PM, personal communication). However, the field-work revealed that some of the women are still very sceptical, because, according tothem, government is not “copying” the exact setup of the project nor do they accept itin its full consequences (PM, personal communication and Khan and Pieterse 2004,19). It is not only important to get the community organised to apply for houses,people also have to build themselves. In the government's PHP projects, the com-munities often use contractors to do the building, while only some communitymembers will help (Adebayo 2011; Ntema 2011; Smets 2006).

Goal:better future (children)Means: --> Housing --> Relocation

Social Network

Start Savings Scheme

Start Building

acquisition of land

PD meeting on saving schemes / ANC connections

6 members

286 members

PD & SAHPF

Conflict

Governmental level

Micro level / neighbourhood scale

Meso level / Organisation’s scale

Governmental level



Governmental level



Conceptual network pre ‘92

Conceptual network 92-98

Conceptual network 98-05

Governmental level

Micro level /neighbour hood scale

Mesolevel / Organisation’s scale

Conceptual network 05-?

Refocus

Project grows beyond original scopeProjects creates policy implications (PHP)

pre 1992

1992

1995

1994

1997

2005

1992

1998

gov. dep.

Fig. 1 Evolution of the social network of the women of Victoria Mxenge


To Conclude

The question arises whether these women were politically active, whether they wereexerting power in a certain way. To answer this question, we first have to recallbriefly the power balance under the apartheid era. South African society underapartheid was clearly dominated by a discourse of segregation, based on Butler's(1990) terminology, was captured within a white heterosexual matrix. Even afterapartheid, the influence and consequences are still quite present (e.g. see Watson2002). Especially, women from formerly dominated groups are still very much at theedges of society in the way Foucault explained it. The women in Victoria Mxenge arean example of these “marginalised” Foucault talks about. However, these women didnot need the help of intellectuals or politicians to realise a change or a shift in society.This shift was even realised in a field they did not conscientiously want to change;their mere aim was a better life and future for their children. So here we find a goodexample of Bourdieu's explanation of the interrelation between one's habitus and afield. We unravel this idea further by considering possible field phenomena that mightbe concealed: which interests, goals or profits are at stake within a given field?Looking at the field of “urban planning”, and supported by Bourdieu's theories(amongst others), we state that one of the most important shares of interest is thesafeguarding or questioning of the existing social structure. This interlock of spatialand social structures implicates that a change in one of both fields has consequencesfor the other one. According to Jacobs (1993), it is within these fields that possibilitiesto break through the “un-make-ability” of society can be found. It is on the smaller-scale level of the fields that an individual is capable of creating small successes. Thesum of these successes can steer our society into a certain direction.

The entry of the women within the “urban planning field” happens at aspecific moment, that is, when the structure of the field is no longer clearlydefined. The increasing pressure upon the apartheid's regime and the transition intoa democratic state led to the collapse of the segregation politics. The legitimatepowers within the “urban planning field” were put under increasing pressure as isthe specific knowledge, only valid in relation to the (previously) reigning ideas andconcepts. For instance, it became clear that with the changes in politics, urbanplanners could no longer draw up racially segregated maps. The specific knowledgefor those kinds of maps had become useless, and planners needed to search for newideas. This created a sort of vacuum in the housing and planning field. The structureof the field was no longer clear and the knowledge for segregation planning con-tested; as such, the conservative strategies also were of no more use. Thus, changes inpolitics created an opening, an opportunity for the women to transform the socialcapital they possessed into a sort of “planning capital”, which enabled them to buildtheir own neighbourhood according to their own specific insights into “urban planning”;these ideas were different from the previous “field-knowledge” used by the apartheidplanners.

The women's approach also illustrates Bourdieu's (1989) statement that “the coreof a philosophical and political strategy can not be developed through cynicalcalculation or a conscious maximization of profits, but through an unconsciousrelation between habitus and field.” We state that spatial strategies are at the centreof this set of philosophical and political strategies, referred to by Bourdieu. The

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specific habitus of the women has encouraged them to realise their objective (a betterfuture for themselves, but especially for their children) through a “spatial planningstrategy”, which has emerged from an “unconscious relation between habitus andfield”.

We finally have to evaluate the impact of this initiative. Has this truly been a startto approach this matter of urban planning and social housing from a different angle?The answer sounds affirmative. Not only did the movement grew and connected withsimilar initiatives, the South African government also developed a similar housingscheme, the PHP project. In addition, we should also consider the setbacks they havebeen experiencing: the conflict with NGO people and the local problems. Thewomen, because of their successes in the beginning, became not only the centre ofmedia attention. Because of their model function, they also became very important forthe organisation at a larger scale. This involvement was time consuming and distractedthe women from their initial core ideas. By 2005, they had clearly opted to refocus againon their own neighbourhood and used the contacts and networks that were createdthroughout their journey to intensify the development of their own community (also seeFig. 1).

The women's initiative shows that the spatial organisation of a neighbourhood canbe stimulating and can result in a positive social mobility for its inhabitants. We seethat, although it is still high, the unemployment rate is lower in Victoria Mxenge thanin other neighbourhoods in the area: the strong collective organisation to fightunemployment seems successful (uTshani 2002). Furthermore, they have set up atransport system for the children to assure better education. The children go to schoolin areas where there is also a more qualitative education, which will give them betteropportunities in their future lives.

Bourdieu claimed that there are fundamental axioms within each field, which arenot being contested, neither by the “connoisseurs” nor by the newcomers. We haveillustrated above that that is not always the case; the vacuum in the planning field, thepolitical transition and the strong personal drive of the women, has contested thefundamental segregation axioms of the field. It illustrates that we have to be aware ofwho constructs these axioms. We suggest that they may be the result of dominantdiscourses in society, discourses which result into norms and principles which can beseen as a specific form of symbolic violence. In this case, the societal and relatedspatial organisation was implemented even long before apartheid became governmentpolicy; it slowly became accepted as a “normal” way of organising the state. Thesesegregation politics became highly contested and eventually were abolished.Consequently, the axioms in different fields, amongst which the planning field,became contested by newcomers within that field. Again, this is supported by ourobservations in Victoria Mxenge. Here, we saw a confluence of different factors,social engagement and a small-scale view on space on the one hand and theopening in the “urban planning field” on the other. Both situations created anopportunity for the women of this township to enter this specific field and use itto achieve their common goal.

This observation is related to another crucial factor which Bourdieu has elaboratedupon, namely that “change happens through an unconscious relation between habitusand field” (Bourdieu 1989). Therefore, we have to be aware that the way to engagepeople for a specific cause could possibly go through a completely different entrance


as the one so obviously expected. The women we followed had a clear engagement inthe urban planning field. This only happened because they wanted to change somethingelse (their children's future) and not merely because they were interested in urbanplanning. Healey already stated that planning issues should be deconstructed to“explore what they mean to different people and whether they are really about whatthey seem to be or about something else” (Healey 1996, 226–227, quoted in Hillier1997).

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