Paper short abstract:

Slovo Park's struggle for upgrades persisted despite legal victories. Exposing challenges, including a 2024 insight into romanticised community collaboration, my presentation navigates frictions in community, intersectionality, and activism, critically addressing community complexities.

Paper long abstract:

For two decades, residents of Johannesburg's Slovo Park endured government abuse, facing demolition and eviction threats. In 2014, with the support of the Slovo Park Community Development Forum and the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa, the community forced the City of Johannesburg to apply for funding under the 2004 Upgrading of Informal Settlements Program. But despite the Johannesburg High Court ordering the grant application in April 2016 and the formal installation of electricity in 2018, little has changed for Slovo Park. During my research from 2022 to 2024, the community's struggle to secure upgrading funding persisted.

In a 2024 conversation with an attorney about the settlement's land history, the emphasis on community collaboration "every step of the way" was notable. While I generally advocate for a politically engaged approach rooted in ongoing community collaboration in research, this comment, coupled with my research observations, unveiled a specific notion of a community guided by ideas of connectedness, unity, and harmony. This raises questions: Who holds the authority to speak and make claims in community meetings, and who participates in the legal process? How do different citizenship or residency statuses, along with varying lengths of residence in Slovo Park, impact residents differently in the event of settlement upgrades?

Using Slovo Park as a case study, this presentation examines potential frictions in emphasizing community collaboration, intersectionality, and activist scholarship. This exploration does not undermine the necessity of these three practices but seeks to critically engage with the challenges that arise in addressing them.