South Africa: The politics of space

"The heart of the local government elections, then, is a contest over the politics of space," writes Raj Patel from the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Centre for Civil Society in a recent commentary about South Africa's upcoming local elections. "On the one hand are shack-dwellers who believed, and still believe, in the ideals of desegregation, of the possibility of rich and poor and black and white living side by side. On the other hand lie local councillors seeking to fence the rich from the poor - councillors who, faced by questions of redistribution from within their own party, can only remain mute."