Explanation:
Social Movements, Socio-Economic Rights and Substantial Democratisation in South Africa Kristian Stokke and Sophie Oldfield I have always said; the struggle is not over yet. I can tell you, we are free politically because black people were not supposed to take top political positions, but economically it is a struggle. … Now we think we are free and yet we are in a struggle with our own children … who are now telling us that you are going to pay or out you are. It is a bitter struggle to me and it is very difficult. I knew my enemy and it was the then [apartheid] government. … But now we are talking about our own children who were in the struggle and who is giving hell to us. (VM, Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign activist, 06/2002) In spite of the fact that leaders of the anti-apartheid social movements have entered into political power and defined the relations between state and civil society in collaborative terms, South Africa’s democratic transition has not put an end to adversarial popular struggles (Ballard, Habib, Ngcobo and Valodia 2003). One decade into democratic rule, the South African state faces severe challenges in including and transforming a racially and socially fractured and polarised society. In fact, post-apartheid South Africa has been marked by an increase in social inequality, particularly in the context of neo-liberal macroeconomic policies (Daniel, Habib and Southall 2003). Material deprivation, combined with increasing use of force against popular protests, have produced and radicalised a range of new social movements that politicise socio-economic rights and demand access to land, health care, housing and public services (Desai 2003). Contestation over the meaning of democratisation, and the relationship between economic liberalisation and the pursuit of social justice lie at the heart of these struggles. This chapter focuses on the politics of a post-apartheid social movement, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign. We specifically examine how community organisations with the Campaign mobilise against state-driven privatisation and cost recovery initiatives to gain access to water, electricity and housing in Cape Town. The chapter analyses the Campaign’s political strategies and capacity to fight for basic services and social justice by focusing on (a) the nature of and sources of political capacities organised through and around neighbourhood issues, (b) the ways such capacities scale up into a social movement such as the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, and (c) the implications of the mobilisation for substantial democratisation more generally in South Africa. Through this specific empirical focus, the chapter examines the clash between policies for economic liberalisation and struggles for socio-economic justice and their relationship to substantial democratisation, a democracy that should allow diverse actors both the possibility and the capacity to make use of democratic rights and institutions to promote their instrumental and democratic aims .
