Keyword: Durban

Notes on the Underside of South African Democracy

Picture: Andre-Pierre Richard Pithouse - The shacks that ring the towns and cities of the global South are a concrete instantiation of both the long catastrophe of colonialism and neocolonial 'development' and the human will to survive and to hope to overcome. To step into the shack settlement is often to step into the void. This is not, as is so often assumed, because a different type of person finds that the tides of history have washed her into a shack settlement. It is because the shack settlement does not fully belong to...

Mucking out the Durban City Hall

Picture: Simisa Richard Pithouse - A forensic investigation has concluded that more than R500 million has been misspent from the housing budget in Durban and recommended that criminal charges be brought against top officials, including the city’s manager Mike Sutcliffe. It’s also emerged that tenders worth more than R80 million have been awarded to the immediate family of the city’s mayor, Obed Mlaba, and that the Mlaba Family Trust was part of an attempt to seize a tender worth R3 billion. There has also...