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Accepted Paper:
Rubbish deaths: violence and the environment in durban, south africa
Emily Ragus
(University of Amsterdam)
Linda Musariri
(University of Witwatersrand)
This paper explores the interconnection between Black men from informal settlements and environmental disasters, focusing on the 2022 South African floods. This examination considers both bodies, the physical and the environmental body, as matter out of place entities and subjected to ruin.
Paper Abstract:
This paper focuses on the destructive interconnection between Black men and environmental disasters within South Africa's informal settlements. Drawing on the concept of ruination of the body we present the case study of a key informant Peace, a black South African man who was murdered in Durban, South Africa in December 2023. We draw parallels between the Black male body and the urban landscape of an informal settlement, as misplaced entities. This perspective sheds light on the transformation of environmental violence, exemplified by the 2022 KwaZulu Natal floods, into interpersonal aggression, culminating in the simultaneous ruination of human and urban bodies. The paper critically examines the prevailing narrative that labels Black men as inherently violent, arguing that this view overlooks the crucial interactions between environmental violence and the subsequent emergence of interpersonal violence as a survival strategy.