Date/Time
Date(s) - Wed - 04 May
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Categories
Dear friends of the Urban Futures Centre @ Durban University of Technology (UFC@DUT),
UFC@DUT will be running its 10th seminar for the year. Please join us as in yet another interesting seminar on informal transaction processes in RDP housing.
Topic : Informal Transaction processes in RDP Housing: An entanglement of customary and Western practices
Presenter: Sandile Mbatha
Date: Wednesday, 4 May 2016
Time: 12:00 to 13:30
Venue: BS2103, Level 1, S2 Block, Steve Biko Campus. Entrance from gate 1 and 2. 79 Steve Biko road.
About the Presentation
There is a widely debated assumption that beneficiaries or the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) are indeed transacting their houses informally. While this perception exist, it is compounded by limited appreciation and understanding of transaction processes and what informs them. The paper focuses on how RDP beneficiaries engage in informal transaction processes using both customary and Western practices. There is a customary-Western entanglement in how they transact their properties. It challenges how property relations are understood by both local government institutions and planning and housing practitioners. Further highlighted by these informal transaction processes are deep seated urban citizenship challenges experienced by RDP beneficiaries. Through navigating customary-Western entanglements, RDP beneficiaries claim their right to the city and thereby challenge the status quo of post-apartheid urban citizenship. The paper advances the argument that post-apartheid urban governance has not adjusted to the changing socio-cultural and economic dynamics of its citizens. The manner in which the urban poor transact their RDP houses should be understood within a broader framework of their struggle to lay claim to the post-apartheid city.
About the Presenters
Sandile Mbatha is a PhD candidate at the University of Stuttgart in Germany. His PhD project focuses on informal transactions in low income housing in South Africa. His main areas of research interest include housing and informality; water, sanitation and peri-urbanism. He has previously worked for Ethekwini Water and Sanitation as an education and research officer. He also worked for National Department of Economic Development as a policy analyst. He established and programme managed Decentralised Environmental Solutions, an NPO focusing on promoting the water-energy-food nexus. He recently worked as an academic at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where he taught at the School of Built Environment and Development Studies. Until recently he spent time as a visiting scholar at University College London where he engaged on collaborative projects with local academics and researchers. As part of his fellowship he has recently completed a research project in Maputo, Mozambique where he investigated low income urban settlement responses to flooding. While at the University College London he conducted a series of presentations across various universities in the UK and Germany. He is also a Director of Ulwazi NS Research consulting which specialises in the collection of qualitative data and community facilitation.
Please feel free to send this on to others who might be interested. Kindly RSVP your attendance.