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Title: Housing and Squatting
Author: Workers’ Solidarity Federation
Language: en
Topics: housing, South Africa, squatters
Source: Retrieved on January 1, 2005 from http://www.cat.org.au

Workers’ Solidarity Federation

Housing and Squatting

The housing crisis in South Africa is massive. About a fifth of the

population live in squatter camps. Millions more live in broken down

hostels, or in overcrowded formal housing . By contrast, the rich live

it up in houses which are far too large for their needs.

The housing crisis also reflects the effects of capitalism and the

State, particularly in their brutal Apartheid form. Low-cost urban

housing was deliberately neglected by the State in the 1960s and 1970s.

The aim was to prevent African people from settling in the cities, the

idea was that African workers’ “real” homes were in the homelands and

that they were thus just temporary visitors to the towns and did not

“need” proper housing. Secondly, the collapse of the peasant economies

of the homelands sent millions fleeing from rural devastation to try get

a better life in the city. This crisis was largely due to the racist and

unjust land reservation system which gave 87% of the land to White

capitalist farmers, and the migrant labour system which drained labour

off the land. At the same time, the capitalist farmers have been

replacing farmworkers with machines such as combine harvesters (provided

cheaply by the State) and, as a result, evicting further numbers of

people.

When the pass laws were abolished in 1986, these people were able to

come to the cities, but the State and capital have consistently not

provided adequate housing. Reason one is profit: the companies do not

want to spend their money on providing basic facilities to the

unprofitable poor, whilst the State does not want to increase taxes on

the companies to fund a housing programme. In addition, three other

factors come into play: firstly, under capitalism, the right to private

property is seen by those in power as more important than the right to

life, and thus squatters are typically chased off the land by the police

if they are residing in defiance of some blood-soaked (colonially

derived) land deed; second, the State always panders to the rich, and

thus is happy to evict the poor when they live near the rich, and maybe

affect property values; thirdly, the State is an inefficient

bureaucratic monstrosity that is quite effective at deploying police,

defending capitalism etc., but hopeless when it comes to providing for

the basic needs of the masses. Instead, much of the (already inadequate)

money gets “eaten up” by the bureaucracy, consultants, corrupt officials

and so on.

In terms of immediate demands, we support squatting, land invasions and

takeovers of unused buildings. Also important, however, would be to take

mass action to put pressure on the bosses and rulers to provide housing.

This housing should be of a decent quality, should provide jobs for

local people such as the homeless, and should meet the needs of the

people concerned. In the course of such struggles and actions, it is

important to build links between squatters and other sections of the

workers and the poor such as unions in the workplace, and working-class

people in formal housing.

We also argue that the issue of homelessness needs to be linked up to

other popular demands such as lower rents and the struggle against

unemployment. Building these links is important because it prevents the

struggles of the homeless from being isolated and picked off one by one,

because it links squatters to the power of the organised working class

in the workplace, and because it makes it difficult for the bosses and

the rulers to divide and rule the class by playing off squatters against

other workers (something which has already happened). Ultimately,

however, we do not think that the housing question can be fully solved

under the current system.