‘If you don’t die first’: Fire, water and women in the shack settlements of Durban

In the chapter, ‘If you don’t die first’: Fire, water and women in the shack settlements of Durban, Shannon Walsh keys in on how ‘for many of the poorest of the poor, little seems to have changed since the end of apartheid.’ She focuses on shack dwellers living in euphemistic ‘informal settlements’. These are make-shift dwellings put together with scraps of metal around Durban and other cities in South Africa. She writes about Abahlali baseMjondolo, the shackdwellers’ movement campaigning around the slogan ‘No Land! No House! No Vote!’ The movement has tried to raise public consciousness about the appalling conditions they have to put up with and how the ‘political system has failed [them] so significantly.’

Reference:
Walsh, Shannon. '‘If you don’t die first’: Fire, water and women in the shack settlements of Durban', in Rob Pattman and Sultan Khan (Eds.), Undressing Durban (Durban: Madiba Press, 2007), pp. 156-165.