Informal Livelihoods and Governance in South Africa by Zaheera Jinnah

Author:Zaheera Jinnah
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783031106958
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Networks

We have our own rules here, our way of working. There is no councillor or premier or minister what-what in the township. We have our leaders. If you want nothing done go to the police, but if you want stuff fixed fast-fast come to us, we are the eyes and ears and the muscles of the community.

These are the words of the miners. They articulate well the reality of informal governance in the township where a patronage-based system of governance is in place. Community leaders, who are unelected, and can be religious, or traditional leaders, or simply prominent businesspeople, have considerable influence on how communities are run: who has access to resources, who can live in an area or who do business, who hears about job or tender opportunities, etc. Elected officials have vested business interests in the community, including in the gold mining informal economy, sponsoring miners or introducing buyers. Police have a reciprocal relationship with the community, protecting and harming, benefiting from and facilitating gold mining in equal breaths. It is a complex web of governance, and social order, drawing on money, resources, nationality and ethnicity, position and power. And it is at the heart of how informal mining, and by extension the townships they are located in, are organised and governed.

Networks are “ties and interactions, whether formal or informal forged between a multiplicity of actors” (Ramia, 2018). Networks in the governance literature refer to formal and informal connections between actors, organisations and sectors (p. 331) with a purpose of policymaking and/or implementation (Klijn, 2008: p. 511 cited in Ramia, 2018). The informal aspect of governance networks is poorly understood in general (there is an emerging literature on backroom deals and lunch club agendas in the European and American context but that is not relevant here). Instead, the connections of the Zama Zama speak to how power and governance is exercised through informal connections between formal and informal actors, in parallel to, or at times completely replacing formal governance.

At another level, among the Zama Zama, connections are a form of resiliency and are essential for survival. Knowing one person will lead you to another and another and will take you underground. For international migrants, the men and women from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Lesotho migrants, life in South Africa begins with work in low-skilled or informal employment, such as domestic work, construction, in small shops or as security, where wages are low (typically around R 2,000–R 3,000 a month), hours are long and exploitation by employers is rife. Through connections, a pathway to informal mining and the economic stability it holds are offered. Given the limited reach of the state in a positive sense among the urban poor, connections become a means to access the resources of the state either through parallel actors who provide these services or through state agents who facilitate access through a bribe. A compelling example of this is around physical security. If there is a theft among the miners, they know that calling the police will likely not result in a case being opened, or an investigation carried out.

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