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South Durban and the Uneven Development of Urban Political Ecology
Patrick Bond, University of KwaZulu-Natal Presented to the American Association of Geographers
10 April 2013, Los Angeles, California
South Durban hosts the 2013 Antipode Institute for the Geographies of Justice
Limits of Interurban Entrepreneurial Competition in Durban Structure and Agency under Neoliberal-Nationalist Municipal Management
Patrick Bond, University of KwaZulu-Natal Presented to the American Association of Geographers
14 April 2011, Seattle, Washington
Limits of Interurban Entrepreneurial Competition in Durban Structure and Agency under Neoliberal-Nationalist Municipal Management
Patrick Bond, University of KwaZulu-Natal Presented to the American Association of Geographers
14 April 2011, Seattle, Washington
Can Durban Recover From City-scale Neoliberal Nationalism?
Looting Durban by PATRICK BOND 2 January 2012
This is the South African city of Durban’s first week since 2002 without City Manager Michael Sutcliffe. He became well known across the world as a target of community and environmental activism, for catalyzing a $400 million stadium for the soccer World Cup in 2010, and for hosting the COP17 climate summit last month, in a city of 3.5 million of whom a third are dirt-poor and another third struggle as underpaid workers. Why did they put up with Sutcliffe’s mainly malevolent rule? Alongside constituencies of fisherfolk, streetchildren and informal traders, many grassroots groups like the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, the Chatsworth Westcliff Flatdwellers, Abahlali base Mjondolo shackdwellers and Clairwood Ratepayers and Residents Association have long condemned race- and class-biased municipal policy and Sutcliffe’s viciousness. But the prestige of the African National Congress (ANC) liberation movement means the ruling party has been comfortably re-elected since the days of Mandela (1994-99). Until the leading trade unions break their alliance with the ANC, that won’t change, and ruthless men like Sutcliffe will stay at the top of government.
structure and agency
Michael Sutcliffe: Durban City Manager, 2002-11
South Durban and the Uneven Development of Urban Political Ecology
Patrick Bond, University of KwaZulu-Natal Presented to the American Association of Geographers
10 April 2013, Los Angeles, California
South Durban and the Uneven Development of Urban Political Ecology By Patrick Bond, University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society
• The $30 billion investment proposal for South Durban's port, logistics and petro-chemical expansion (over the period 2013-50) offers an opportunity to further fuse intellectual traditions of political economy and political ecology, driven in this case by community and environmentalist praxis.
• The proposal stems from urban restructuring plans for Africa's largest port and oil refining site that were overseen by Dr Michael Sutcliffe (a former Marxist who was recipient of two prestigious AAG professional awards in 2008). Durban's uneven socio-natural power relations were contested from below dozens of times during Sutcliffe's 2002-11 reign as City Manager.
• It is useful to review the character of these disputes for the purpose of projecting present and future social struggles – and accumulation processes – across South Durban's space, racial segregation, gender relations, generational politics, ecological struggles and class alliances, in an area with more than 300 000 residents.
• For example, climate justice advocacy will become increasingly important because of CO2 emissions (in shipping and refining), in the wake of Durban's December 2011 hosting of the UN Climate Summit.
• In addition to steadily higher refinery activity, there are three stages of the South Durban Port Expansion envisaged, as planners anticipate an increase of freight activity from 2 to 20 million containers per year by 2050.
• These flashpoints provide opportunities to consider the way not only the most proximate neighbourhoods (Wentworth, Clairwood and Merebank) are resisting, but also broader considerations about an alternative, post-carbon, commons-oriented South Durban.
framing poli-econ in South Africa
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2013: construction crisis, $440 billion infrastructure spend?
context: ‘Minerals Energy Complex’ megaprojects
Durban’s back-to-back world-class
stadiums
uShaka Marine World
I C C
Point luxury flats
underutilised new airport 40 km north of Durban
Back of Port Zoning Plan, secret 2011 municipal document
Municipality: it’s not Sutcliffe’s plan (Mercury, 21 August 2012)
$30 billion shipping-petrochem makeover: 1) 1) deepening/widening of main port
2) 2) new roads & dug-out port (old airport) 3) 3) major expansion of old port
single buoy mooring:
80% of SA’s intake
Sapref: BP/Shell
Engen: 80% Petronas
(Malaysia)
hypertoxic South Durban
Toyota car assembly
Mondi paper mill
hazardous petro-chemical plants
Africa’s biggest port
Island View refinery
Africa’s largest oil refining complex
container terminals
freight traffic
(often illegal)
new capacity: R250 billion plan!
R250 bn ‘Back of Port’ project
Toyota’s terminal next to expanded refinery
who wins from new
infrastructure spending? • Johan van Zyl, Toyota SA CEO: ‘Durban as a
brand is not strong enough to simply say “come and invest in Durban”. What it needs to attract investors are big projects. Durban needs to keep ahead of the competition. China is building ports they don’t even know when they will use. If return on investment is the line of thinking we may never see the infrastructure.’ – 6 February 2012
• Peter Bruce, editor of Business Day: ‘mine more and faster and ship what we mine cheaper and faster’ – February 13 2012
• Minister of Economic Development Ebrahim Patel (whose 2013 Infrastructure Development Bill limits
EIAs): ‘We took account of the lessons of the 2010 World Cup infrastructure and the growing experience in the build programmes for the Gautrain, the Medupi and Kusile power stations, the Freeway improvement programme and the major airport revamps.’ –
Feb 2012
major contestations of environment, bird & fish habitats
Source: South Durban Community Environmental Alliance
South Durban’s most explosive refinery: Engen
Settlers Primary School: 52% asthma rate (world’s highest)
fires, explosions in South Durban
25 October 2008, flaring, regular occurrence at SAPREF and Engen
Source: South Durban Community Environmental Alliance
• 21 September 2007, Island View Storage (IVS) facility, tank explosion
• 18 September 2007, explosion at the IVS facility.
SDCEA demands refinery closure
18 January 2005, explosion at Engen Refinery
S. Durban’s next most explosive refinery:
Island View
October 10, 2011
October 11, 2011: war on Engen
Settlers Primary School: 52% asthma rate, highest in world
Rural Women’s Forum march for Climate Justice at COP17, Durban, South Africa, Friday, December 2, 2011
Global Day of Action, Durban, South Africa, Saturday, December 3, 2011
Copenhagen Accord, COP 15, December 2009
• Jacob Zuma (SA) • Lula da Silva (Brazil) • Barack Obama (USA) • Wen Jiabao (China)
• Manmohan Singh (India)
‘collaborating actively’ with climate catastrophe
Durban’s COP17 ‘Conference of Polluters’
allowed US sabotage, no new emissions cuts
SA in the chair
Durban COP17: ‘Africa’s Climate Summit’
confirmed 21st-c. climate-related deaths of 180 million Africans (Christian Aid)
then came March 2007 storm
extreme beachfront damage
also poor and working people – especially shackdwellers
not just the rich living on the beachfront
rogue oil tanker MT Phoenix (Nigeria) ran aground north of Durban… 400 tonnes pumped out at huge risk and expense
(phew!); unregistered ship towed out to sea for sinking
another recent beach threat,
from high-CO2 ship industry
another storm, August 2011
Engen refinery, August 2012
activists envisage 5-step ‘South Durban Detox’
resist,rezone, restructure
1) reverse attempted rezoning of Clairwood 2) enforce/expand existing residential zoning
of Clairwood, Merebank and Wentworth 3) mobilise solidarity in Durban & everywhere
4) take seriously climate rhetoric: shift freight to trains, lower trade vulnerability, de-smokestack 5) plan/implement post-pollution, post-carbon Durban with ‘Million Climate Jobs’ campaign