The Amadiba Crisis Committee: sustaining mobilisation in Xolobeni, South Africa

Abstract

This thesis seeks to understand how the Amadiba Crisis Committee (ACC), a rural movement from Xolobeni, has sustained mobilisation and worked with allies in civil society. The ACC was formed in 2007 in response to attempts by a mining company, Transworld Energy and Mineral Resources (TEM), to establish a sand mine off the coast of the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Since 2007, the ACC has achieved significant victories in their fight against imposed development projects they argue threaten existing livelihoods that rely on the land. This thesis theorises the ACC's mobilisation by drawing on concepts such as political opportunity, resource mobilisation, repertoires of action, framing and resource frontiers'. The thesis responds to the research question(s) by undertaking a thematic analysis of textual data drawn from semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with ACC members and their allies in civil society, most of which were collected during fieldwork in Xolobeni. The study finds that the ACC has sustained mobilisation through the combination of more public and institutional repertoires of action with more subtle everyday forms of resistance. These repertoires include dynamic uses of the law and rights discourses to further the movement's goals. The ACC also used more confrontational tactics whereby activists use their bodies to physically disrupt extractive projects' operations, actions which are coordinated through communication networks and local leadership structures. Furthermore, the ACC promotes alternative development strategies in a way which can be conceived as a type of prefigurative politics whereby activists actualise and embody the types of relations and development they want to see in the world. Many of these tactics were supported and made possible due to the presence of allies in civil society such as Sustaining the Wild Coast (SWC). Although there is a risk that such allies may end up co-opting and undermining mobilisation, this risk has been averted because both the SWC and the ACC are committed to maintaining separation between the movement and NGO in mobilisation. The SWC's support has included facilitating access to media and civil society networks located in urban areas and using these networks and social capital to access information and other necessary resources. Overall, the movement has sustained resistance to imposed development projects by drawing on strong existing historical community ties, using diverse repertoires to achieve goals and build the movement's base, and by consistently outlining alternative development strategies as a positive vision to their mobilisation. This has consolidated the ACC as a movement and established them as a powerful force with the ability to shape local development, policy and public discourse.