Scale and identity in post-apartheid Soweto

In this paper I argue that the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC) provides an illustration of the repertoires and strategies of scale that communities and individuals adopt in making sense of the places they inhabit. Like many post-apartheid social movement organisations, the SECC contains both the everyday lived experiences of its members as well as broader social and political agendas. The organisation is constituted at the scale of the local neighbourhood branch on the one hand, and at the scale of the activists and academics that make up much of its leadership on the other hand. The leadership maintains a strong national and international profile; many branch-members of the SECC join because of shared local experience. While these two scales of the organisation are not necessarily contradictory, I argue that they are separately articulated and offer very different networks and political resources in contesting state policy electricity provision. I conclude that these competing claims of scale are not simply tools in a political game, but may in fact indicate more complex social and personal identifications with place. Because segregation in the post-apartheid context is delineated not only by race, but also by class (...) race-class identities continue to be significant political, economic and social markers. Yet, their meanings and residents' identities prove more complex. These identities are forged through experiences in the city (and elsewhere), through interaction with the state for resources, and through participation in social movements that conform to neighbourhood boundaries, but are also broader in scale. (Pieterse and Oldfield 2002: 3)