Diepsloot

Inside Diepsloot: A Review of Anton Harber’s Diepsloot

Anton Harber: Diepsloot. Jeppestown: Jonathan Ball, 2011.ISBN
978-1-86842-421-4

What makes this book important? It gets behind the (often sensational and misleading) headlines and lifts the lid on what actually happens inside this informal settlement of +/- 200000 people, north of Johannesburg. (It borders on its near neighbour and polar opposite, the very upmarket suburb of Dainfern.) There are many more Diepsloots – it is one of about 1700 informal settlements around the country, all competing for attention. Such places are often the sites of “service delivery” protests and vigilante action. Rather like the canary in the mineshaft, they give us early warning of the stresses and strains that threaten our society, and our common future. The author, Weekly Mail founder and editor, Anton Harber, tells us: “I learned that if you want to understand where this country is headed, you need to listen to the people of Diepsloot.” And he does.
The book points to the often intractable difficulties that prevent progress and impede service delivery (among these, “the frog” – the Giant Bullfrog whose natural habitat is Diepsloot East, and which needs to be protected). There are multiple overlapping authorities, various processes that have to be followed – and no one seems sure where the money will come from. Even where there is the political will, this is a bureaucratic nightmare. The problem, in a nutshell, is this: the state is faced by multiple challenges in its attempts to regulate and introduce services to an area where people have simply moved in, built shacks, set up trading stands, and tapped into the Eskom electricity grid – without seeking permission from anyone to do so!
Interestingly, Diepsloot is a child of the “new” South Africa: it dates from 1995, when the “Zevenfontein squatters” took it upon themselves to move in. Subsequently (in 1996, and again in 2001) people were relocated from Alexandria. “The people of Diepsloot are “the cast-offs and refugees of other areas” – and about 30 000 new people arrive every year. Some 5000+ RDP houses have been built, some housing stands have been developed, and there is some bonded housing – but this is a drop in the sea of 3x2 metre shacks. Sanitation is inadequate: sewerage flows through the street or into the stream (the “sloot”) that runs through the centre of the settlement. Most people rely on informal trading to survive. Life is precarious, crime is rampant, and in the absence of effective policing or a working criminal justice system, people often take the law into their own hands.
In this “organised chaos” the authorities have limited purchase. The ANC representatives operate out of offices, talk the language of due process, and counsel patience. Closer to the grassroots are SANCO and the SACP and the Youth League: “We know the needs of the people. We feel the pressure because we are here on the ground”. These organisations have a tense relationship with the ANC. Local ANC leaders accuse SANCO of running a “mob-like organisation” that takes protection money, threatens foreigners (Diepsloot was the site of extreme Xenophobic violence in 2008), and sells access to land and shacks. Harber’s book provides a valuable insight into alliance politics on the ground, beyond the headlines. It reflects a variety of opinions, and gives space to all the “stakeholders” (as well as to the views of ordinary residents) and avoids over–simple judgements.
What one gets from Harber’s book, then, is a careful, well-researched and systematic study by an outsider who brings his skills as an investigative journalist and his personal integrity to bear. His overview is based on what he sees and hears in Diepsloot (he spent four months there, and interviewed hundreds of people), and its objectivity and fairness are obvious. This is of course still an outsider’s perspective: the book does not try to provide a hands-on street level account of daily life as experienced by the residents of Diepsloot. This is not a criticism, just a description of the kind of book this is – and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else.
Harber chooses not to problematise the fact that he is white, and an outsider, but he can hardly be unaware of this. One or two black critics (e.g. Andile Mngxitama) have used this as a stick to beat him with, asking why “a white researcher would care to intrude into black spaces”. This kind of knee-jerk, half-baked response smacks of reverse racism: do we really want to create a new social and intellectual apartheid, where only “blacks” can write about “blacks”, and “whites” about “whites” – and where we keep to our own (racially defined) spaces?
Take the trouble to read the book (unlike Eric Miyeni, who criticises it without having read it), and arrive at your own judgement!