We Are the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa

by Ashwin Desai

When Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa in 1994, freedom-loving people around the world hailed a victory over racial domination, injustice and inequality. The end of apartheid did not change the basic conditions of life for the majority of oppressed South Africans, however. Material inequality has deepened and new forms of resistance have emerged in commnities that have discovered a common oppression and solidarty and forged new and dynamic political identities.
Desai's book follows the growth of the most unexpected of these community movements, describing from the inside the process through which the downtrodden regain their dignity and defend the most basic conditions of life. His book begins with one specific community, with local government enforcing cut-offs of water and electricity, and evicting families from their houses whose breadwinners have lost their jobs. As the Chatsworth community begins to organize and discover leaders among its ranks, so their example spreads to other communities in Durban and the KwaZulu-Natal region, and their struggles build links with those in other parts of the new South Africa.
We Are the Poors was a major event in the life of the South African Left when the first edition was published there in 2000. This new edition follows the ongoing course of events to the present.

Genres: South Africa, Africa, Nonfiction, Sociology

160 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2002

About the author

Prolific sociologist and activist Ashwin Desai, holds a Master’s degree from Rhodes University and a doctorate from Michigan State University. He is professor of sociology at the University of Johannesburg.

(from http://www.cca.ukzn.ac.za/index.php/t...)

Reviews

[Cynthia L'Hirondelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short but insightful book; a must read for any anti-poverty organizers.

[Ben Jaques-Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It hurts me not to have loved this book, but I think in truth I would have always wanted to like it more than I could ever actually have done. Stories of resistance by poor people and communities in South Africa since the end of apartheid. You can't help but feel the need of change in the stories in this book.

I just can't get behind the idea that there is some name-able evil in this world that one must fight against to bring about the revolution. There are nasty greedy people out there, but I think that for the most part folk are just trying to do the best they can working within whatever system they are in. Neoliberalism has always been a strange monster. I know that the system is somehow meant to enrich multilateral corporations, but how booting poor people out of their homes and cutting them off from basic services does this I have no idea.

The book gets the point right when the people are fighting against local government to make sure they enact policies that make sense for the citizens. The connection between local government policy and neoliberalism seems tenuous, but the author is much happier focusing this big enemy than perhaps the simply thing: governments make bad policy all the time.

The idea that the protests described in this book are the best and only legitimate way to change the lives of the poor is quite offensive. Protest and revolution clearly haven't improved the lives of the poor. If that were the case, there would have been no book written about South Africa.