This dissertation examines the production of an everyday politics of infrastructure within informal settlements in the Khayelitsha area of Cape Town, South Africa. As residents attempt to meet water, sanitation, and electricity needs through assemblages of informal service connections, in addition to limited formal services provided by the municipality, their material exclusions are articulated as evidence of persistent political marginality. Residents engage in multiple modes of politicized action seeking expansion to formal infrastructure and full inclusion in the promises of citizenship. However, they also face an array of complications created by municipal reliance upon neoliberal policies, practices, and logics. Despite a nominal emphasis on participatory processes of governance and development, municipal approaches to service provision and community engagement produce further marginalization. In order to theorize the intersection of neoliberal urban governance and democratic practice, this dissertation examines participation as the result of complex interactions between everyday experience, urban governance, circulating moral logics, and the work of civil society. The realm of politics emerges as one unbound by parties, NGOs, or social movements; instead, it is read dialectically both into and from the landscape of informality. Across three articles, this dissertation examines participation as a contested terrain of politicized action, shaped by neoliberal practices of governance, post-colonial tensions, and uneven social acknowledgement of experience, knowledge, and action.

Magister Artium - MA / This study explores the lives of Kanana residents, an informal settlement in Gugulethu Township on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. It pays particular attention to their everyday lives to dispel negative and simplistic representations of informal settlement residents when they collectively take part in protests. Although there are extensive reasons for the protests in the informal settlements, the media and the South African government have reduced these protests to portraying them as demands for “service delivery”, and furthermore as criminally induced protests. I point out that this problem is partly due to scholarly work that does not engage these misleading representations and illustrate the lives of shack residents in the ordinary, when they are not protesting. Thus the focus of this thesis is life beyond protests. I argue that the lives of shack residents who participate in the protests are complex. As opposed to negative and simplistic representations, this thesis illustrates that one needs to be immersed in the lives of shack residents so as to understand them as identifiable human beings who make meaning of their lives. I explore their lives in the shack settlement further and argue that these human beings live their ordinary harmonious lives centred on the practice of greeting. To highlight the complexity of life of protesting informal settlement residents this thesis makes a point that there exist unsettling realities in the shack settlement; unsettling realities that make residents feel to be less of human beings. Kanana residents, therefore, draw from these perpetual unsettling realities to organise and protest. This thesis is based on ethnographic research, which was conducted between September 2015 and February 2016. During fieldwork, I observed and interacted in informal conversations with Kanana residents. With the main co-producers of this work, I carried out their life histories and further in-depth interviews.

When HIV/AIDS first emerged from the shadows decades ago, few people could visualise how the epidemic would evolve, and fewer still could describe with any certainty the best ways of combating it. Today, we know from experience that the impact of HIV/AIDS thrives in conditions of socio-economic vulnerability and inequity. We are witnessing how HIV/AIDS is devastating regions, widening the gap between the rich and the poor, pushing the already stigmatised groups further away and destroying the sustainability of communities and their development conditions. The burden lies on local governments, National as well as regional authorities to take a more proactive role in confronting the pandemic and to prioritise activities geared towards the prevention of the spread of the disease. To fight poverty is to promote human development thus broadening people’s choices. This research project assesses the current practices that Johannesburg government has taken as an appropriate strategy to fight HIV/AIDS in Informal Settlements using the Human Development Strategy. Assessing the appropriateness of Human Development Strategy, an Informal Settlement named Sol Plaatjies, which is situated in Region 5 of Johannesburg, is used as a case study. The appropriateness of this strategy is measured against its ability to reduce the effects that are brought about by the HIV/AIDS since this strategy has been implemented in Sol Plaatjies.

Historically, Zimbabwe’s urban population enjoyed high water supply and sanitation service levels and standards, having one of the highest coverage levels in Africa. However, over the last two decades, the quality of Zimbabwe’s urban water supply and sanitation services has slowly been eroded. The poor, displaced and disenfranchised Zimbabweans that occupy Harare’s informal urban settlements are vulnerable to challenges posed by unavailability of basic water and sanitation services. This qualitative research project, carried out between January and June 2013 in Harare’s Hopley and Retreat informal settlements, investigates factors that have been preventing delivery of basic sanitation services to residents in these two settlements. Presenting evidence from the two informal settlements of Hopley and Retreat, this research establishes that there is a complex relationship at play between policy processes, the prevailing political environment and the way in which institutions have responded to the problem of sanitation in these settlements. The study was undertaken towards the end of an era of a negotiated Government of National Unity between ZANU-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change, highlights the dominance of power and political contestation between the two parties that has spilled into policy decisions on basic service provision in the informal settlements. The deep rooted culture of political violence which characterised the political environment from 2000 onwards, with very little commitment to democratic processes, was instrumental in the development of Hopley settlement after the 2005 elections. At face value, ZANU-PF was providing displaced people with alternative accommodation. However, as Muzondidya notes, this along with other ZANU-PF strategies is ‘(c)onsistent with its hegemonic political culture… to engage in cosmetic political and economic reforms that will not result in further democracy or result in a loss of its historic monopoly over power…’ (Muzondidya in Raftopolous, 2013, p.50). Informal settlements are a relatively new phenomenon in Zimbabwe. However, since their inception, they have continued to grow, fuelled by ZANU-PF’s strategy to allocate unserviced residential stands in exchange for residents’ allegiance to the party, with the most recent illegal residential stand allocations taking place in Chitungwiza town in 2013. A close examination of Hopley and Retreat revealed that water and sanitation services provided in Zimbabwe’s informal settlements are typically inadequate or non-existent – a situation that has the potential for severe public health impacts. The emergency actions taken by Non-Governmental Organisations during the height of the 2008 cholera outbreak only provided short-term sanitation solutions. The research concludes that water and sanitation services in Zimbabwe’s informal urban settlements have come to this point, mainly due to the interacting forces of politics. These have influenced policy processes on decision-making, formulation and implementation of sanitation policies for informal settlements. Despite the political origins of several informal settlements, there is a notable absence of practical policies to tackle the issues posed by this development and a lack of institutions capable of instigating the plans needed for change.

Student Number : 2503365 MSc Building (Housing) research report School of Architecture Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment / The failure of governments to promote efficient housing policies coupled with increasing speculation in land markets has resulted in scarcity of serviced land, leading to a lack of adequate housing for the majority of the urban population. This has resulted in illegal land use and development and the eventual situation of informal settlements developing at a rapid rate. However most governments in the developing world, including South Africa have failed to acknowledge that most new urban informal settlements are developed by an illegal process as informal settlement residents willingly or unwittingly contravene planning regulations, contravene laws out of ignorance of the legal requirements, coupled with the inability to conform to the high standards set. Consequently, States respond to this illegality in the form of eviction as it threatens the economic, social and political stability of the urban environment. Concepts promoted internationally and identified in international literature recognize that the solution to informality lies in appropriate protection of rights which should ensure access to secure shelter leading to access to other benefits such as livelihood opportunities, public services and credits. That flowing from International Laws and Covenants, Human Rights Law needs to be looked at as a system of law that creates legally binding obligations for states with the aim of protecting, respecting and promoting housing rights for informal settlement residents. In the context of rights, Fernandes goes further in emphasising the legal constitutional perspective of the urban phenomenon where law is used as a vehicle for urban development and social change as well as encouraging state action and its attempts at socio-political legitimization in the context of informal settlement intervention.

The dissertation employs insights from critical race theory and the environmental justice literature, questioning the sustainability of dominant state policies concerning development of informal settlements. The work explores spatialized and racialised forms of class and their normalisation in South Africa. Discussion of the rise and redefinition of urban segregation in South Africa notes racialised exclusions have not disappeared with the end of apartheid. Economic supremacy of ‘white’ populations reproduces ‘white’ control – with dirt, crime and disorder constitutive of the pathological spaces of the ‘other’. Second part examines the role of environmental ideas in reproducing ‘white’ spaces of privilege and ‘black’ spaces of degradation. Discussing neo-liberal development, sustainable development and ecological justice in South Africa – the dissertation shows service delivery and housing policy to possess similarities to apartheid projects – with weaknesses of the dominant model failing the requirements of environmental justice. The case study which follows examines a contemporary attempt to relocate an informal settlement sited in an affluent neighbourhood through ‘greenfields’ housing development, revealing environments as contested, with spatial subjugation dramatic and ongoing.

This thesis is an attempt to address issues of housingtransformation in informal settlements. Transformation ofhouses is seen to be associated with modernisation forceswhereby people adapt their houses to suit their needs anddesires. On one hand the desire to own a“modernhouse”may lead to deterioration of spatial qualities, onthe other hand fulfilment of the desire may contribute to themodernisation of urban settlements. The informal settlement ofHanna Nassif was chosen as a case study to illustrate theprocess of housing transformations in informal settlement.Knowledge on the transformation processes serves as animportant tool to address issues of spatial qualities, housingmodernisation, actors in the processes of transformation anduse of space. The results show that there is a wide range oftransformation activities that have been taking place in termsof extensions and alterations. The desire to modernise theirhouses impels developers to use modern building materials. Insome instances houses constructed with traditional buildingmaterials are replaced with industrially produced materials.Through transformation processes new house types emerge. Thestudy identifies problems as well as positive aspectsassociated with the whole process of housing transformation.The positive aspects are those of increased indoor space,increase of rooms for renting and in other cases separation offunctions. The problems emerging from this process include:decrease of outdoor space, increase of housing density,blockage of ventilation and light in the transformedhouses. The study concludes that housing transformation being oneway in which lowincome earners strive to get access to housingdeserves government support, particularly in the absence ofalternative housing supply. It is further observed that todatemany urban dwellers have managed to secure housing as a directresult of house extensions effected by house owners. The houseextensions are being carried out outside the established formalplanning regulations. It is in the light of these developmentsthat there is a cause for government intervention to guidehousing development processes in informal settlements.Professionals like planners and architects should also assume arole for quality and sustainability to prevail. The study alsosuggests specific problem areas for further investigation. <b>Key words:</b>Tanzania, housing transformation, informalsettlements, modernisation, spatial qualities and housetypes.

Within Buenos Aires there exists a boundary between the formal, planned developments of the middle class and the informal, organically-developed self-built housing of the poor. Villa 31, an informal settlement located near the heart of the city, contrasts directly with the skyscrapers of the Argentinean capital’s financial and political centre. The tension between the formal and informal cities creates a stigmatization of the residents of Villa 31, essentially barring the possibility of its integration into the city. The boundary between Villa 31 and Buenos Aires exists not only in the physical space between the two, but more importantly in the collective imagination of the city’s inhabitants. This is a story of the space between Villa 31 and Buenos Aires. It chronicles the attempts at crossing that boundary and the obstacles encountered. As a means of presenting the work to a broad audience, the story was written as a comic book. The first-person narrative helps to immerse the reader in the story while presenting the full complexity of the problem through a personal account. The story reveals the complex relationship between Villa 31 and Buenos Aires as a means of understanding the invisible boundary between the two. The core of the research consists of two months of field work in Buenos Aires conducted through October and November of 2009. Journal entries, photographs, conversations and first-hand experiences were transformed into a comic book that tells a story of the invisible boundary between Villa 31 and Buenos Aires.

<p>This thesis is an attempt to address issues of housingtransformation in informal settlements. Transformation ofhouses is seen to be associated with modernisation forceswhereby people adapt their houses to suit their needs anddesires. On one hand the desire to own a“modernhouse”may lead to deterioration of spatial qualities, onthe other hand fulfilment of the desire may contribute to themodernisation of urban settlements. The informal settlement ofHanna Nassif was chosen as a case study to illustrate theprocess of housing transformations in informal settlement.Knowledge on the transformation processes serves as animportant tool to address issues of spatial qualities, housingmodernisation, actors in the processes of transformation anduse of space.</p><p>The results show that there is a wide range oftransformation activities that have been taking place in termsof extensions and alterations. The desire to modernise theirhouses impels developers to use modern building materials. Insome instances houses constructed with traditional buildingmaterials are replaced with industrially produced materials.Through transformation processes new house types emerge. Thestudy identifies problems as well as positive aspectsassociated with the whole process of housing transformation.The positive aspects are those of increased indoor space,increase of rooms for renting and in other cases separation offunctions. The problems emerging from this process include:decrease of outdoor space, increase of housing density,blockage of ventilation and light in the transformedhouses.</p><p>The study concludes that housing transformation being oneway in which lowincome earners strive to get access to housingdeserves government support, particularly in the absence ofalternative housing supply. It is further observed that todatemany urban dwellers have managed to secure housing as a directresult of house extensions effected by house owners. The houseextensions are being carried out outside the established formalplanning regulations. It is in the light of these developmentsthat there is a cause for government intervention to guidehousing development processes in informal settlements.Professionals like planners and architects should also assume arole for quality and sustainability to prevail. The study alsosuggests specific problem areas for further investigation.</p><p><b>Key words:</b>Tanzania, housing transformation, informalsettlements, modernisation, spatial qualities and housetypes.</p>

Within Buenos Aires there exists a boundary between the formal, planned developments of the middle class and the informal, organically-developed self-built housing of the poor. Villa 31, an informal settlement located near the heart of the city, contrasts directly with the skyscrapers of the Argentinean capital’s financial and political centre. The tension between the formal and informal cities creates a stigmatization of the residents of Villa 31, essentially barring the possibility of its integration into the city. The boundary between Villa 31 and Buenos Aires exists not only in the physical space between the two, but more importantly in the collective imagination of the city’s inhabitants. This is a story of the space between Villa 31 and Buenos Aires. It chronicles the attempts at crossing that boundary and the obstacles encountered. As a means of presenting the work to a broad audience, the story was written as a comic book. The first-person narrative helps to immerse the reader in the story while presenting the full complexity of the problem through a personal account. The story reveals the complex relationship between Villa 31 and Buenos Aires as a means of understanding the invisible boundary between the two. The core of the research consists of two months of field work in Buenos Aires conducted through October and November of 2009. Journal entries, photographs, conversations and first-hand experiences were transformed into a comic book that tells a story of the invisible boundary between Villa 31 and Buenos Aires.