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The role of civil society in promoting greater social justice for forced migrants living in the inner city of Johannesburg

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par Dieudonné Bikoko Mbombo
University of the Witwatersrand of Johannesburg, South Africa - Master of Science in Development Planning 2006
  

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4.1.2. Community

Based on the findings of my fieldwork, this subsection aims to examine the types of

community that exist in the inner city, in order to see whether they can facilitate greater cohesion for a just city. But before analysing the inner city communities, it is important to define the term `community' broadly.

There are many definitions of `community' but, for Hill (1994), community is a group of people «sharing common interests in a network of social relationships» (Hill, 1994: 34). In other words, communities exist through human communication, and people can communicate only if they interact with each other in the course of their everyday social and economic lives.

Thus, people's experiences of community are both spatial and social. What is central to the

notion of community concerns the fact that people have something in common called `space'

(to which they attach some meanings) and `values' (that they can discover from each other through social and economic interactions).

From the spatial side of people's experiences of community, Hill emphasises the importance

of cohesion (spatial cohesion) among members of communities and believes that they should find the meaning of community in `shared interests and values (Hill, 1994: 35). That is, the core of community should be found not in territoriality but in shared interests and values.

Looking broadly at the communities of people living in the inner city of Johannesburg, and based on my interviews with the members of CSOs and FMs, as well as on my own experience as an inhabitant of the inner city, I can argue that there is a lack of real communities that Hill defines in terms of group of people sharing common interests. From the side of the South Africans, the interests of their own community groups are at the top of the agendas compared to the interests of all the inhabitants of the inner city as a whole. The historically disadvantaged South Africans (especially blacks) think that all the government actions should be focused only on them, for their `empowerment'. The politics of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) seem to be used as an argument to justify their intention of excluding and prevent other residents (especially foreigners) from sharing with them the benefits and the resources of the Johannesburg or of the country. The majority of black people regard FMs as those who came in Johannesburg to compete with them and steal their jobs. That is why, most of my informants claimed that it is common in the inner city to hear South Africans launching slogans such as «Makwerekwere» or «foreigners, go home».

From the FMs' side, as most of them feel like excluded and marginalised in the inner-city, every single FM prefer to choose friends only among people from his/her own country. That

is why, one can notice that, in places such as Hillbrow and Yeoville, Nigerians (for instance) prefer to stay together in order to share (as a community of people coming from the same country) their day-to-day experiences. The same behaviours can be seen among the DR- Congolese, Zimbabwean, Tanzanian, and Ethiopian communities. Feeling excluded from the city's life and from the citizenship practices, the majority of FMs developed a fearful and hostile attitude towards South Africans. According to Mr Anonymous One (see Chapter Three), such attitude can be seen especially when the South African national soccer team

plays against a foreigner team. He argued that the majority of foreigners do not like to support

Bafana Bafana, not because they do not like soccer, but because they have developed hostile

attitudes towards South Africans due to their xenophobic attitudes towards foreigners

(Interview with Anonymous One, 2006).

According to me, encouraging more interaction (through communication, dialogue, and intercultural activities as I will recommend in Chapter Five) between South Africans and FMs may be one of the better means that local authorities may used to help them to develop strong social relationships between them and create real communities because, as Hill says, communities can exist only through human communication and people can communicate only

if they can interact together in the course of their everyday social and economic lives (Hill,

1994: 34).

In planning, communicative planning theorists emphasise the importance of communication

in citizenship practices. Forrester, for instance, and others, «drew inspiration from Habermas

to pose communication as the most important element of planning practice» (Watson, 2002:

29). Communication may help interest groups towards interacting, communicating ideas, forming argument, debating differences in understanding, and reaching consensus on issues regarding their lives in the city. As I have already said, communication or dialogue should be promoted by the city's authorities to facilitate social cohesion between South Africans and FMs. By doing so, FMs can fully live their presence in the city without feeling excluded because the cities of the 21th century will be intercultural or «The City which is Not One» (Sandercock, 2006 and Tagg, 1996).

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"Nous devons apprendre à vivre ensemble comme des frères sinon nous allons mourir tous ensemble comme des idiots"   Martin Luther King