Making Freedom: Apartheid, Squatter Politics, and the Struggle for Home - Softcover

Makhulu, Anne-Maria

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822359669 ISBN 13: 9780822359661

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2015

Synopsis

In Making Freedom Anne-Maria Makhulu explores practices of squatting and illegal settlement on the outskirts of Cape Town during and immediately following the end of apartheid. Apartheid's paradoxical policies of prohibiting migrant Africans who worked in Cape Town from living permanently within the city led some black families to seek safe haven on the city's perimeters. Beginning in the 1970s families set up makeshift tents and shacks and built whole communities, defying the state through what Makhulu calls a "politics of presence." In the simple act of building homes, squatters, who Makhulu characterizes as urban militants, actively engaged in a politics of "the right to the city" that became vital in the broader struggles for liberation. Despite apartheid's end in 1994, Cape Town’s settlements have expanded, as new forms of dispossession associated with South African neoliberalism perpetuate relations of spatial exclusion, poverty, and racism. As Makhulu demonstrates, the efforts of black Capetonians to establish claims to a place in the city not only decisively reshaped Cape Town's geography but changed the course of history. 

About this title

About the Author:

Anne-Maria Makhulu is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology and African and African American Studies at Duke University. She is a coeditor of Hard Work, Hard Times: Global Volatility and African Subjectivities. 

Review:

"Anne-Maria Makhulu sketches a moving picture of the often desperate struggles of squatters against the apartheid state in their efforts to make possible some sort of combination of work and family life. She also highlights important shifts and continuities under post-apartheid and the turn to neoliberal policies. Making Freedom is a major contribution that will impact the historiography of South Africa, urban studies, political economy, and anthropology of the state, market, and violence."  -- Peter Geschiere, author of, Witchcraft, Intimacy, and Trust: Africa in Comparison

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0822359669
• ISBN 13: 9780822359661
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256