Brown Bag Seminar
Speaker: Ujithra Ponniah (Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of the Witwatersrand)
In-person at Niagara C0826 and on Zoom.
Abstract:
This seminar focuses on land-based accumulation strategies employed by two sets of property elites—landowners and developers—who shaped the making of Waterfall City, the largest property development in South African history. Drawing on 51 in-depth interviews, an analysis of 110 pieces of secondary material produced by the city, and a close reading of Waterfall City’s land deeds, I show how both who owns the land and how it is owned shape post-apartheid gated living.
Landownership in Waterfall does not change hands, because its Indian landowners were forced to hide both their identity and their ownership from apartheid officials. As a strategy of wealth defense against the apartheid state, the landlords transferred the land into a religious trust, which prohibited any change in ownership. In the 1990s, when they sought to “unlock” the real estate potential of private landholding, they subdivided the land into smaller parcels known as Waqf—ring-fencing risk and once again obscuring ownership. The landlords then handpicked white developers to develop the Waqfs through 99-year leases. This leasing system enabled the landlords to retain ownership while partnering with developers to extract rent in perpetuity. Banks were brought on board to accept the lease itself, rather than the land, as collateral.
The exercise of class monopoly power came at a revenue loss to the municipality, and court cases against neighbouring landlords to control competition. The river was diverted, enclosed, and biodiversity sacrificed to water the lawns of the wealthy and provide tenants with a beach lifestyle. Labour footfall was carefully controlled, surveilled, and minimized through the design of built environments. Even the visual signifiers of urban belonging—such as billboards or the placement of a temple within a home—were regulated by property elites through tripartite lease arrangements in conformity with the Muslim religious values of the landlords. This paper contributes to understandings of elite power by tracing apartheid-era continuities in land ownership and showing how they mold gated living in post-apartheid South Africa.
This seminar is part of the IUR Brown Bag Seminar Series. If you have any questions, please contact Defne Kadioglu and Julie Goodrich.