Ekurhuleni ISN plans groundbreaking summit with municipal government

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By Benjamin Bradlow, SDI secretariat

The calendar year of 2009 ended with hope about a budding engagement between the Ekurhuleni metropolitan municipal government and the counterpart structure of the Informal Settlement Network. Council speaker Patricia Kumalo met with ISN and CORC to discuss the possibility of holding a summit about informal settlements that would include the executive mayor, relevant departments, and representatives from every informal settlement in the municipality, as identified through ISN’s city-wide informal settlement profile.

Kumalo first became engaged with ISN through a series of events in Alberton Station informal settlement. The residents there led a protest in October 2009 during which they handed over a memorandum of understanding. As a matter of policy, Kumalo was compelled to visit the settlement in response to the memorandum. It was then that she first met representatives from ISN, who were at the settlement talking with Alberton Station leadership about their eviction battle against Intersite and Spoornet. She set up a meeting with the community’s leadership, and ISN’s General Alfred Moyo told her more about ISN in Ekurhuleni. When the community of Alberton Station conducted a self-enumeration survey in November, she attended a ceremony to mark the survey despite the cold pouring rain. There she saw representatives from 14 SDI affiliate countries who were visiting for the concurrent SDI council meeting. She used her remarks at the ceremony to note the processes and structures of support she was seeing at that time.

This engagement seemed to have disappeared in the new year. There was little communication from either side and hopes for the summit were floundering.

Today, both sides moved towards clear commitment to this exciting forum. Kumalo introduced members to be part of a planning committee with representatives from ISN. She mobilized representatives from the offices of the city manager, executive mayor, and the MMCs for water/energy, housing, roads/transport, community safety. From the municipal government side, she said, this summit will be driven by the executive mayor’s office, of which she is a part. Also in attendance were 11 representatives from ISN.

Kumalo emphasized that the city was recognizing that it had to look beyond just housing to address the issues relevant to informal settlement dwellers. She was particularly keen to emphasize the partnership with ISN on this summit. ISN will be equal partners in all planning stages, she said: “It will be a joint project, right up to the end of the summit.”

She spent considerable time explaining to the government representatives on the planning committee the process of ISN, how it mobilizes support, the extent of the city-wide informal settlement profile that the network has recently concluded, as well as its links with international networks of the urban poor. ISN and SDI representatives all agreed that it was a powerful, noteworthy, and accurate portrayal of this unique poor people’s process.

It was agreed that 3 representatives from every one of the 122 informal settlements in Ekurhuleni will attend this summit. The date remains to be negotiated, and though Kumalo initially suggested that the meeting be held for one day on 7 April, when Moyo suggested that it be a two-day summit, she was open to the possibility. She even suggested that she would try hard to free up the executive mayor to attend both days of the summit, but could not commit to that now. Moyo’s suggestion that representatives from national and provincial departments be invited, in addition to municipal officials was welcomed.

Moyo also proposed that a key part of the partnership must be future data collection. Community-led, municipally-sanctioned enumerations and mapping could be the next step, now that the ISN profile is complete.

The municipality committed to fund catering, transportation for all informal settlement dwellers, and provision of the venue for this summit.

A challenge from the planning committee arose that perhaps ISN should not be the only structure based in communities to be part of the summit. ISN representatives responded by articulating that the process of ISN is to network existing structures in all informal settlements and not to replace them. Kumalo emphasized this point as well, which appeared to appease this concern, at least for now. Ward committees could be invited as well, in order to engage all relevant structures. She agreed that NGOs, academics and others could be invited. “This summit is about you,” she said. “We don’t want to separate you from your partners.” The theme for the summit, she said, should speak to what ISN hopes to gain from it. “We are here because you [ISN] proposed it [the summit].”

When government officials seem so closely tied to the process in seemingly positive ways, it is important to be wary that they do not overtake the process. Kumalo, at least, appeared to be aware of this kind of concern. She ended the meeting with just such a message: “My humble plea is that the executive mayor would like to see this be a joint project. That we don’t walk pambhili [ahead of each other].”

When the next meeting with the planning committee was planned for next Wednesday, the proposed venue was the Ekurhuleni municipal office in Germiston. ISN and FEDUP’s Alfred Gabuza immediately made a counter-proposal: to hold the meeting in an informal settlement. Suffice to say, next week’s meeting will be held in the informal settlement of Makause, where Moyo resides.

“It’s a blessed marriage that I’m foreseeing here,” said Johannesburg ISN’s Mohau Melani.