Research Design

In this thesis I adopt a qualitative approach with an ethnographic or phenomenological element as a strategy of inquiry (Creswell 2002: 8). The following section offers a review of the research methods adopted in this study. These were chosen in consideration to the established view that “it is the goal of qualitative research to represent the personal meanings, experiences and perspectives of individual informants” (Atkinson 2005). In view of the above, the section also details how the field was entered and contact made with respondents.

Some of the difficulties associated with the research methods encountered in the field are also discussed.

1.8.2.1 Qualitative approach

Drawing from the argument in Terre Blanche & Durrheim (Eds.) (1999), this i-nquiry is an attempt to provide new insights into the meaning attached to private property ownership based on individual experiences of property-owners in Alexandra Township. A qualitative approach was employed. I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of who the property owners of Alexandra Township were and how they negotiated challenges facing them during the various phases of property relationships in their township over the years. Also, a qualitative approach is preferable for this kind of study since it helps to “give voice to the socially excluded” (Creswell 2002, citing Bertaux 1996: 8). It also “allows room to be innovative” as well as to undertake exploratory research which is suited to this project (Creswell 2002: 23, 30). This study, which explores the phenomenological understanding of private property

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ownership by the families of the erstwhile private property owners provides a platform for exploring how the experiences of such families shaped understanding of private property ownership and how such an understanding is simultaneously shaped by the notion of owning property privately. Hence I relied on the interviewees‟ interpretation and personal understandings of their experiences as well as the hidden and unspoken information in their narratives since it sort to understand the “meanings” attached to property ownership by families of the erstwhile Alexandra property owners.

I explore how “subjective understandings and experiences of individuals fit into the larger socio-political discourses” (Terre Blanche & Durrheim 1999: 148) of Alexandra. It does so in a manner that takes account of the injunction that we “cannot apprehend human experience without understanding the social, linguistic and historical features which give it shape” (Kelly 1999: 398). The central point of departure is therefore that we need to accept that “these meanings are varied and multiple” and that researchers have “to look for the complexity of views rather than narrowing meanings into a few categories or ideas”

(Creswell 2002: 8).

The research identifies the “essence of human experiences concerning a phenomenon”

(Creswell 2002: 15, citing Moustakas 1994). In this instance, the phenomenon is private property. Participants described private property and their understanding of related lived experiences. Creswell explains that phenomenology can be adopted as a philosophy as well as a method of the procedure (since) it involves studying a small number of subjects through extensive and prolonged engagement to develop patterns and relationships of meaning”

(Creswell, citing Moustakas 1994: 15). However, in this case, while a small number of subjects were studied this was not done as extensively as I would have liked. Due to financial and time constraints, formal conversations with the subjects took an hour to two hours.

However, in some instances there were either additional telephonic conversations or other informal discussions at Alexandra Land and Property Owners Association (ALPOA) offices and meetings.

The qualitative approach employed in this study has also been informed by the considerations associated with the hermeneutical tradition, as interpreted by Habermas in his critique of the objectivation of meaning in both language and transverbal level of actions (Habermas 1972: 165). This caveat is essential, since this study is concerned with making sense of human experience rather than discovering universal law-like patterns of human behaviour (Kelly 1999: 398).

29 1.8.2.2 Research Methods

In this study, I adopted a combination of research tools and sources. These include documented and oral evidence. A variety of archival materials were consulted. Among these were official and newspaper reports. In addition, the study draws on life histories with a special focus on the property ownership narratives of the bommastandi families.

1.8.2.3 Documentary and archival records

As the first port of call, records of Alexandra Land and Property Owners Association (ALPOA) were consulted. ALPOA is an organization that claims to represent former property owners in Alexandra in various issues pertaining to their properties. It is currently assisting former property owners in Alexandra with the process of land claims and restitution of properties that were wrongfully expropriated. Since families that are claiming their properties back work together closely with this organization, I was able to obtain from ALPOA the latest contact details of family members who I wanted to interview for my property life stories.

Second, I used documentary material from the National Archives in Pretoria to try and piece together the ways of life of Alexandra residents – in particular property-owners – especially in the period that predated the lives of my respondents. The archives provided various sources of information such as letters between government officials, as well as between government officials and various committees, organizations and individuals. Also included were minutes from meetings and petitions.

Third, I sourced information from other archives, including, at the University of the Witwatersrand, the William Cullen library, the University of South Africa library archives, the Johannesburg city library as well as the Pretoria State Library. Here I accessed information on legislation, and government policy on Alexandra Township, as well as on governance and various moments of resistance which were recorded. I also retrieved information on the lives of some Alexandra residents. From these centres, I accessed news clips from newspapers such as Dark City Report, Izwi lase Township, Libertas, Sowetan, the Rand Daily Mail, the main paper and the Extra Editions, The Star and Sunday Times which were powerful tools which presented discussions held at the time they occurred. I also used articles from websites.

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Finally, I used other secondary material, especially on Alexandra, such as theses (Tourikis, 1981; Sarakinsky, 1984; Jochelson, 1991; Carter, 1991; Nauright, 1992 and Lucas, 1995) and other printed material such as scholarly on Alexandra, for example, Lucas, (1996) and Bozzoli (1991, 2004), Bonner and Nieftagodien (2008), Nieftagodien (2011).³⁹

There are two more issues I want to address in relation to the documentary evidence used in this study. The first relates to the challenges of using such sources in a place like South Africa. The second concerns the way in which such sources merge (or do not merge) with the property life histories conducted for this study.

The use of public archives in South Africa presents a challenge “due to South Africa‟s racialised and divided history” (Peterson 2002: 30). Peterson (2002: 29-38) outlines two challenges in particular which he cautions researchers using them to bear in mind. First, some knowledge and records that might have been deemed “inconsequential” and “inappropriate”

were excluded from archival holdings. Second, Peterson argues that “South African public archives particularly have been monolingual in that they have embodied and voiced only the experiences and discourses of the successive oligarchies that have governed throughout the twentieth century” (Peterson 2002: 30-31). For that reason other experiences and insights

“were generally either ignored or criminalised” (Peterson 2002: 30-31). The imperative to supplement and expand the reach of the documentary record by conducting property life histories was informed by these debates about the construction and storage of archival material. The interview materials present Alexandra properties as homes that were subsequently wrenched away from bommastandi by government through various means.

However, information from the archives mostly presented them as a problem linked to the township.

On the other hand, while this study is aimed at pursuing information that may not be on official records, it simultaneously took cognisance of the fact that oral interviews may not yield some of the information due to the inaccessibility of other potential interviewees.

Peterson (2002: 31) refers to the “challenge of finding, assembling, cataloguing and elucidating as much as possible the black experiential archive which is claimed to be everywhere and to bring it into play in the public or institutional orbit”. Even though the purpose of using such material alongside life stories was not primarily to validate information from the sources, cross-referencing between documents and oral history revealed interesting convergences of information from these sources. For example, some respondents would

39 The last two have written extensively on Alexandra.

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mention an event which is documented in the archives as something they have read about or heard about from their parents. However, what is significant for this study is how such events documented or not, would have been captured in the life experiences of these families. Such articulations were also necessitated by the project‟s intention to reveal parts of history that do not represent the official perspective on Alexandra Township.

Although the bias of written records has been widely documented (Neuman 1997), it was interesting to note that some materials, although recorded within the official discourse of the time that exposed the undesirability of some African behaviour in towns, nonetheless accorded me an opportunity to rethink them using a newly emerging understanding of urban African life. This is an understanding that has not been recorded until recently (Mbembe &

Nuttall 2004; Simone 2004 and 2005; Simone A & Abouhani A. (Eds) 2004).This point was taken up earlier in this chapter.

1.8.2.4 Life stories as a strategy of the qualitative approach

Life stories in general, shed light on “hidden historical processes”. Thus, through them one can move beyond the limits and biases of the written record and broaden the framework for understanding experiences of interviewees (Grele 1985; Hofmeyr 1993). For example, in the introduction to her book, We Spend our years as a Tale that is Told: Oral Historical Narrative in a South African Chiefdom, Isabel Hofmeyr (1993), raises a concern with the gap in scholarship in what she terms “popular understandings of history itself”(Hofmeyr 1993: 9).

Although she acknowledges the appearance of work that is based on oral history, in Southern Africa in the past 20 years, citing Paul La Hausse, she laments a dearth of attention to “forms of interpretation and intellectual traditions that inform facts of oral history” (Hofmeyr 1993:

9).

This point is best illustrated in the works of Passerini (1986) and Gittins (1998), which shed light on the relationship between interviewees‟ experiences and “historiography”.

For example, Passerini (1986) argues that not only should one consider the silences of interviewees in relation to the “discourse of historiography” but one should bear in mind that

“historiography” also tends to remain “silent on issues of great relevance for the lives of individual people” (Passerini 1986: 187). Therefore, I did not use the interviews primarily to confirm or counter-check information recorded as history. However, there were points of convergence between the two sources. Additionally, Gittins (1998) suggests that silences are not necessarily coincidental since they are “created consciously, unconsciously and at a

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number of levels, not just within individuals but among collectives generally” (Gittins 1998:46). As indicated in some interviews, these silences seemed both conscious and unconscious as they, in some instances, occurred where and when a highly emotive event was recalled. They appeared as if respondents paused to try to collect themselves or observe a moment of silence in respect of people referred to who most probably died.

But property life stories also reveal the significance of memory in presentation of a story. Memory played a very significant role because of the many changes that these families experienced in their relationships to the property. Field (2001:63) contends that “While apartheid‟s social engineering physically destroyed District Six, it did not succeed in erasing the place from popular memory”. This means that destroying their homes and resettling the district Six people did not take away from them their lived experiences that have most invariable left an indelible mark in their memories. With Alexandra the memory of loss is reinforced by the constant interaction with their homes and their township and in some instances members of the community who they have known all their lives.

Typically the shift in the notion of “stand as a temporary place”, which is referred to in the beginning of this chapter, was revealed, in that these families experienced this shift in multiple ways. First, they acquired their stands as freehold, which inferred permanence.

Then, at expropriation, the impermanence set in, but then again in 1988, permanence was suggested by the offer to repurchase. However, this proved to be complex as this occurred at the time when Africans were offered 99-year leasehold in urban places. While at first bommastandi seem to have embraced this process of repurchase as a chance to reinstate their parents‟ properties, they soon discovered that council did not share this view.

I used property acquisition and dispossession “life stories” of 21 Alexandra Township families. This was done through 21 conversations with 33 members of these families of the former free holding families. Additional information was also sought through telephonic conversations and in some instances visits and brief chats both at ALPOA offices and ALPOA meetings. The main participants were both women and men depending on who was available in the family. However, in some instances other members of the family such as spouses or partners⁴⁰ and in one instance a child would comment as and when the need arose.

The age of the participants varied between 48 and 89. Although I would have loved to have had access to the original owners of the properties this was not possible, thus I interviewed the second generation of property owners. This refers to children of property owners. Only in

40 Partner specifically refers to a non-married relationship, without cohabitation in this instance.

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one or two instances did I interview third generation family members, that is, grandchildren of property owners. I drew my respondents from the free holding families who, except for two,⁴¹ remained in their homes after expropriation, because it was possible to locate and find them in Alexandra.

But most importantly, this group would, through their memories of continued life in Alexandra, help provide understanding of how changing property ownership regimes produced a certain kind of relationship to property due to the continued occupation of their homes long after they were expropriated. These families who never left their homes provide an understanding of property relationships which contemporaneously encapsulates the legal and the socio-cultural understanding of their lives.

This convergence is illustrated in their title deeds and the undocumented memories which emerged during interviews respectively. I started with their current relationships with their properties, which in some cases is settled in that they managed to repurchase them while in some it is heavily charged with tormented anxiety as they go through the process of land claims in order to regain their parents‟ properties, or if this is not possible, move to alternative homes. I traced back these relationships to the time the properties were purchased freehold, in all cases by the parents or grandparents of the respondents.⁴² Although it might have been valuable to have input from non-free holding members of the Alexandra population as well, due to the transitory nature of most of its residents over the years, it was not possible to access and hold a continued interaction with such families.