CRUSHED?

CAIROS GARBAGE COLLECTORS

AND NEOLIBERAL URBAN POLITICS
PETRA KUPPINGER
Monmouth College

ABSTRACT: For decades Cairos solid waste management, based on local garbage collectors (zabal;

pl. zabaleen) was among the most uniquely ecological in the world. In recent decades, the zabaleens
work has increasingly been pushed aside, as aspects of their services were contracted to multinational
companies. This article argues that, with their continued presence, activities, and savvy understanding
of urban dynamics, marginalized groups like the garbage collectors hold on to their livelihood in the face
of economic pressures. The author illustrates how the zabaleen, who have been targets of oppressive
policies and more recently been slated for economic displacement by neoliberal schemes, have for
decades experienced injustice, poverty, frustration, and humiliation. In the face of such adversity, they
developed and enacted their own forms of responses and activities, as they continued to encroach onto
urban spaces, pursue economic possibilities, and devise everyday forms of street politics.

n the spring of 2009, when the world was swept by the beginning hype about the swine flu (H1N1),
governments around the globe issued statements and initiated programs to keep their populations
safe. The Egyptian government announced the most drastic measure to prevent the disease from
spreading: it ordered the entire Egyptian pig population to be slaughtered. International health
agencies immediately responded that the swine flu was not transmitted from pigs to humans, and
that there was no need for a massive pig slaughter. The Egyptian authorities paid no attention to expert
voices and in May 2009 enforced the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of pigs, most of which were
the property of poor Christian (Coptic) families who worked as garbage collectors in large cities. The
pig massacre seriously hurt or destroyed the livelihood of tens of thousands of garbage collectors
(zabal; pl. zabaleen) and their families. Two questions arise: why would a government inflict such
traumatic damage on families that provided vital services to urban residents and whose livelihood
was based on raising pigs? What are the rationales as well as the long-term consequences of such
oppressive measures?
To understand the May 2009 pig massacre and its broader context and implications, it is necessary
to examine the history and work of Egyptsand concretely Cairoszabaleen, and their position
vis-`a-vis municipal institutions, official discourses and political ideologies. Examining the political
and economic field in which the zabaleen operate, it becomes apparent that the pig disaster was
just one chapter in a longer conflict over rights, territories, access to waste, and urban economic
organization between authorities and garbage collectors. Moreover, with hindsight it becomes clear
that the pig massacre was one of numerous instances of government oppression and violence that
indirectly and unintentionally fed into the Egyptian uprising of 2011. The last two decades have
been marked by continuous conflict between the zabaleen and urban or national authorities, largely
as the result of the ruthless implementation of neoliberal policies which not only diminished the
livelihood of the zabaleen but ultimately aimed to eliminate much of this livelihood and transfer its
Direct correspondence to: Petra Kuppinger, Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Monmouth College, Monmouth, IL 61462.
E-mail: petra@monm.edu.
JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Volume 36, Number S2, pages 621633.
C 2013 Urban Affairs Association
Copyright 
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
ISSN: 0735-2166.

DOI: 10.1111/juaf.12073

622 I JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS I Vol. 36/No. S2/2014

revenue to global corporations. In the course of this confrontation, the zabaleen, like other similar
constituencies, learned important lessons about politics and developed and refined tactics used in
street politics (Bayat, 1997).
In this article I introduce the zabaleen and their uniquely ecological waste management system
with its exemplary recycling rate of about 85% (Aziz, 2004, p. 9; Boyd, 2008, p. 47; El-Dorghamy,
2008).1 I analyze controversies of the last two decades between urban authorities and the zabaleen in
the framework of neoliberal urban policies when economic measures, spatial schemes, and concrete
projects intensified long-existing pressures (e.g. of relocation and improvement schemes) exerted
on garbage collectors and their communities. Recent conflicts involving the zabaleen and their work
and livelihood feature in Egypts economic restructuring, in which resources, economic processes,
potential sources of corporate profit, and urban spaces are re-evaluated by political and economic
elites and redistributed in their own best and corporate interest. These conflicts illustrate the growing
disparity between elite visions of the city and the lifeworlds of economically marginalized groups as
much as they illustrate the discrepancy between the interests of those the city is planned for and
those it is planned against (Loukaitou-Sideris & Ehrenfeucht, 2009, p. 223). In this process, local
economic formations are opened to global exploitation. Instead of improving and investing in effective
local economic circuits, officials hand over responsibility and profitable ventures to corporations
who offer dazzling solutions that are often out of tune with local conditions. As Cairos cityscape
is reworked to approximate other global metropolises, functioning urban elements are eliminated or
remade to become profitable for global companies and their local brokers. These processes create
considerable urban tension and individual and communal frustration and humiliation when, for
example, street vendors or markets are removed, housing demolished, or livelihoods endangered.
Examining the history, economic circuits, advanced recycling skills, and fine-tuned practices and
tactics of Cairos garbage collectors, I argue that their continued economic and social survival is
closely tied to their intimate knowledge of the city, consistent presence, and quick formulation
of new tactics in moments of crisis. Analyzing the zabaleens ongoing struggle for economic and
social participation, I pay attention to contradictions in the implementation of locally insensitive
and ill-adapted neoliberal schemes and policies. Resulting fissures and ruptures provide possibilities
for disenfranchised groups to maintain their economic circuits, or to reinsert themselves and their
services in altered ways into the mess created by badly tailored large-scale projects. By way of their
art of presence (Bayat, 2010), daily work, spatial and social tactics, and broader survival activities,
these groups, with their sheer numbers, deeply rooted local practices, and organization are often
able to remake new regimes, alleviate shortcomings, or correct worst failures. During the Mubarak
era, when the police apparatus allowed for little open or large scale protest, these groups learned
valuable lessons about the tactics of street politics. Disenfranchised groups like the zabaleen keenly
understood that their best bet was to score small-scale local victories by encroaching on every
possible and available territory or opportunity (Bayat, 1997).
Examining struggles and controversies involving the zabaleen, I describe one field of ongoing
everyday street politics where ordinary people in their everyday tactics and art of presence countered
forceful policies which kept producing frustration, suffering, and humiliation. With each blow they
received, the zabaleen formulated tactics to return to previous more favorable set ups, devised lowlevel protests or worked hard to make the best of adverse situations. I argue that the zabaleens recent
struggle against neoliberal policies forms one of the many sites and circumstance where Egyptians,
as Mona El-Ghobashy noted, have been practicing collective action for at least a decade, acquiring
organizational experience in that very old form of politics: the street action (2011).
COMPETITIVE CITIES AND PERSISTENT URBANITES
At the turn of the twenty-first century, Cairo joined the race for urban branding and a place
in emerging global city hierarchies. In the face of stiff competition, cities refashion themselves
as commodities that compete for recognition and economic participation (Waitt, 1999; Bauman,
2007; Zukin, 2010, p. 231). They enter fierce battles to attract global investors, tourists, events,
and spectacles (Sassen, 2001). To remain viable competitors, cities need up-to-date international

I Cairos Garbage Collectors and Neoliberal Urban Politics I 623

transportation and communication services, upscale shopping, entertainment and leisure facilities,
convention centers, cultural and educational institutions, safe residential quarters, and have to be
clean. Cleaning here not only pertains to physical materials but often implies also the cleaning-up
of popular life (Abaza, 2011, p. 1075) and of unsightly popular quarters (Ghannam, 2002). As they
plan for global recognition, municipal authorities, private investors and public-corporate initiatives
and projects alter the face of cities to become the corporate city of transnational headquarters, bigbox stores and Business Improvement districtsthe business class city (Zukin, 2010, p. 222). To
keep up in this cut-throat contest, cities embark on costly ventures to construct and improve airports,
hotels, and cultural or leisure facilities. Museums, performance venues, and sports facilities are crucial
to illustrate a citys willingness and capacity to invest in competitive luxury spaces (never used by
most local residents), in particular in the Global South. To illustrate their global arrival, cities
compete for globalized spectacles, most notably the Olympics or Soccer World Cup (Broudehoux,
2007; Carter, 2006; Hubbert, 2010; Rutheiser, 1996). They similarly vie for smaller events such
as global conferences and regional sports events. As they plan for events and successful futures,
authorities push unwanted or marginalized groups momentarily or permanently out of downtown
or desired upscale urban spaces (Rademacher, 2008; Amouroux, 2009). Some quarters might in the
process be given up or deserted by local elites (Abaza, 2011).
After authorities opened government-owned desert land for private investors in the 1990s, Cairo
greatly expanded in only a few years as massive real estate developments, among them gated
communities, mushroomed on the citys fringes. Numerous malls, clubs, and hotels were built in the
city and beyond (Abaza, 2001, 2006; Kuppinger, 2004). To indicate global arrival, with its superior
organizational and material possibilities, ambitious individuals and groups in Egypt jumped at the
opportunity to be an internal bidder in Africas campaign to find a host country for the 2010 World
Cup (BBC, 2001; Boyd, 2008, p. 48). The bid never materialized, but it made some officials look at
the city from a global perspective and reminded them how much remained to be done if Cairo was
to become a site for global spectacles.
Hard-pressed to control urban spaces and alleviate the tension that results from the growing gap
between rich and poor, and between the glittery, safe, and clean spaces of leisure and consumption
and the neglected spaces of non-consumers (see also Bauman, 2008), elites and investors generally
opt for the gradual segregation of urban lifeworlds (Davis, 1992; Low, 2003; Kuppinger, 2006a,b).
Control of urban spaces and populations gives way to the construction of exclusive spaces and regimes
of spatial governmentality where new regulatory mechanisms . . . target spaces rather than persons
(Merry, 2001, p. 16). Spaces are regulated and offensive behavior excluded rather than attempting
to correct or reform offenders (Merry, 2001, p. 16). Instead of policing the poor, they are locked out
(except as service personnel; Caldeira, 2000; Ellin, 1997). Such urban politics and governance often
succeeded in U.S. contexts (Davis, 1992) or newer cities in the Arab Gulf (Davidson, 2009; Syed,
2010; Kanna, 2010, 2011). The messy reality of cities like Cairo, however, is not easily remade.
Complex urban forms, everyday practices, spatial and economic configurations can only slowly and
incompletely be restructured by way of layered methods of control and surveillance and regimes of
economic and spatial governance. Resulting governing structures are incoherent and eclectic. They
reflect the random, largely reactive, and piecemeal process of their inception. Because concrete
ventures and their accompanying ad hoc regulatory frameworks are often badly adapted to local
circumstances, their implementation on the one side violently excludes and sometimes randomly
targets the homes, spaces, and economic activities of the poorer classes, but on the other hand
provide openings for these groups to insert their long-standing economic activities.
Official policies, regulations and concrete urban projects are frequently faced by stubborn lifeworlds of ordinary citizens, as they devise tactics to claim their share of urban resources and spaces
(de Certeau, 1984; Lefebvre, 1991). They employ an individual mode of reappropriation in the
face of an often powerful and overwhelming collective mode of administration (de Certeau, 1984,
p. 96). Asef Bayat talks about the art of presence of disenfranchised populations as they encounter
ill-suited, harmful or negligent policies (2007, 2010). He emphasizes ordinary peoples

624 I JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS I Vol. 36/No. S2/2014

courage and creativity to assert collective will in spite of all odds, to circumvent constraints,
utilizing what is available and discovering new spaces within which to make oneself heard, seen,
felt, or realized. The art of presence is the fundamental moment in the life of nonmovements, in
life as politics. (Bayat, 2010, p. 26)

Bayat insists that political and economic practices are formulated in neighborhoods, on street
corners, in mosques, in workplaces, on bus stops, or in rationing lines, or in detention centers,
migrants camps, public parks, colleges, and athletic stadiums (Bayat, 2010, p. 22). In these mundane
spaces ordinary people meet, discuss issues, test ideas and practices, and slowly articulate collective
responses which are not formulated as political protest or resistance, but as ways to maintain or
improve peoples lives in the face of adverse conditions. Resulting every day acts of work, production,
and social relationships might go unnoticed, but could be harbingers of significant social change
(Bayat, 2010, p. 26). Some turn into sand in the engine of neoliberal policies.
Global restructuring and subsequent local projects pull ordinary urbanites into larger circuits
of political and economic dynamics and turn individual and communal lifeworlds into terrains of
political negotiations (Bayat, 2010, p. 45). Frustrated by being ignored as citizens, and disillusioned
by organized politics and corrupt leaders, disenfranchised individuals and groups move directly to
fulfill their needs by themselves, albeit individually and discreetly. In short, theirs is not a politics
of protest, but of redress, struggle for an immediate outcome through individual direct acts (p. 59,
emphasis in original). The sum total of disenfranchised groups activities has (unplanned) potentials
to remake larger social and political contexts. James Holston argues that they can remake notions of
citizenship and might democratize urban spaces and publics spheres (2008, p. 9). In the case of Brazil,
Holston notes that conflicts and tensions between the forces of government and the ordinary practices
of citizens are marked by dramatic economic and power differentials.2 Popular action is frequently
met with merciless responses (p. 18). Like Bayat, Holston argues that, as poor or disenfranchised
groups enter into such public negotiations, they do so not as a form of political protest, but are
motivated by (collective) self-interest, because it gives them rights, powers and privileges (p. 17).
As these groups pursue their immediate interest, they stake out larger terrains of political tension and
possible long-term gains, losses, and transformations. Their combined frustration as well as their
tactics of encroachment and street politics are cumulative and have the long-term potential to feed
into or fuel larger confrontations.

EFFICIENT WASTE MANAGEMENT

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, cities in Europe and North America (Gandy,
1994; Miller, 2000; Strasser, 1999), and in the colonized South (Medina, 2007) faced new challenges
handling growing quantities of garbage as a result of rapid industrialization. Political bodies were
slow to address waste management issues (Melosi, 2005; Rogers, 2005). Colonial urban authorities
wasted even less effort on waste than their metropolitan counterparts. Urban populations were left to
deal with growing mounds of refuse. In many cities the poorest of the poor became scavengers who
collected and recycled urban waste (Miller, 2000; Pellow, 2004).
At the turn of the twentieth century, migrants from desert oases (wahi, pl. wahiya; those of oases
origin; Volpi, 1996, p. 14) started to collect waste from wealthier households in Cairo. The wahiya
added features to existing circuits of waste management where some waste had long been collected
or bought by those in need of these materials. Like their predecessors, the wahiya sold paper and
other waste to those who needed fuel like owners of public bathhouses or makers of fuul (a bean dish;
Assaad & Garas, 1993/94, p. 2). The wahiya provided a living for themselves, kept the city (especially
wealthier quarters) relatively clean, and instituted networks of recycling. In the 1940s, as quantities
and types of garbage increased, poor Upper Egyptian Christian migrants became subcontractors with
the Muslim wahiya (Assaad & Garas, 1993/94, p. 2). These migrants, soon called zabaleen, bought
the organic waste (the largest part of the refuse) for their pigs, which their Muslim employers were
prohibited by their religion from keeping (Fahmi, 2005, p. 156). The wahiya continued to supervise
the waste system, while the zabaleen collected waste (Fahmi, 2005, p. 156; Haynes & El-Hakim,

I Cairos Garbage Collectors and Neoliberal Urban Politics I 625

1979, p. 102). Middlemen (muallim) set up impoverished new arrivals with a shack, pigs, and a
pigsty (zeriba). The zabaleen paid for the garbage and their premises (Kamel, 1994, p. 100). The
wahiya oversaw the business as brokers; they owned garbage routes and rented them to garbage
collectors (Haynes & El-Hakim, 1979, p. 102). In the 1950s and 1960s muallims set up zabaleen
settlements on the urban fringes (Kamel, 1994) as the wahiya extended services in the growing
city. No municipal waste management plan existed (Haynes & El-Hakim, 1979, p. 104). Zabaleen
worked and lived largely untouched by intensifying webs of governmentality (Foucault, 1994). Urban
expansion repeatedly forced them to relocate to more distant parts of the city. As garbage proliferated,
the zabaleen improved their recycling system to include glass, metals, bones, tin, paper, plastic, and
rags, which were sold to dealers who resold them to workshops (Haynes & El-Hakim, 1979, p. 103).3
They devised organic solutions to problems, as they tailored work regimes, methods, and techniques
to local circumstances.
Around 1970 authorities relocated several thousand zabaleen to the lower plateau of the Moqattam
Mountains east of Cairo (Assaad & Garas, 1993/94, p. 2). Residents received no municipal services.
Children or young girls walked for over an hour to fetch water. The zabaleen persevered, worked
their daily routes, fed their pigs (an ancient indigenous breed well suited to this lifestyle [Stino,
2009]) and sold recyclables to middlemen. The community provided work for thousands. Small
workshops either in the community or nearby (e.g., Manshiet Nasser) converted, for example, plastic
or aluminum into dishes or silverware. Waste that could neither be recycled nor fed to the pigs was
dumped on the outskirts of the community, where it was regularly burned, clouding the area in smells
and pollution. Until the 1980s there was no school or health center in the community (Aziz, 2004,
p. 10).
Because the zabaleen sought valuable garbage, they did not service poor neighborhoods. Yet, no
municipal waste management existed in Cairo through the 1970s. Only public streets and parks were
cleaned by municipal workers. Itinerant scrap dealers bought bulk waste or old furniture (Haynes &
El-Hakim, 1979, p. 102). Poor people were left to throw their refuse on neighborhood dumps that
were regularly set on fire. On the urban outskirts, waste was often dumped into irrigation canals,
some of which turned into flowing garbage heaps; some stopped flowing altogether. Authorities
periodically cleared canals with heavy equipment, or if canals were no longer in use they were filled
and turned into streets. In the 1970s, the lack of waste management in poorer quarters did not yet
constitute a pressing problem for the authorities, as the poor were only marginally integrated into
emerging consumer cultures. Urban animal husbandry (chickens, ducks, or goats kept in alleys, on
balconies, and on rooftops) took care of most organic waste.
Being a zabal has always been a family business (Haynes & El-Hakim, 1979). Husbands left the
settlements in the early morning with donkey carts. Children traveled with their father to guard carts
while the father went into buildings to collect garbage. Upon returning home, the contents of the
cart were dumped in the family yard, where women and children sorted the garbage. Pigs or goats
consumed organic waste (Kamel, 1994; Volpi, 1996). Family dwellings served as huge garbage
transitory stations (Kansouh-Habib, 2009b).
The zabaleens waste system is flexible and innovative, but in the past had tremendous human costs. In 1979 infant mortality among the zabaleen was 40% (Haynes & El-Hakim, 1979,
p. 105). In 1983 the garbage collectors ranked in the lowest 10% for urban incomes in Egypt
(Fahmi, 2005, p. 157). In the 1970s, the Moqattam community started organizing. With the help
of the Coptic Bishop Samuel, zabaleen founded the first garbage collectors association (Association of Garbage Collectors for Development [AGCCD], registered with the Ministry of Social
Affairs in the early 1970s; Kamel, 1994, p. 15). The Moqattam zabaleens suffering was violently augmented in 1976 when almost the entire community burned down twice in one year in
accidental fires. Although nobody was killed, these fires, growing quantities of unserviced waste,
and rising awareness of the horrendous living conditions of the zabaleen generated a political
understanding that waste management needed to be addressed. Some advocates emphasized that
improved garbage schemes needed to include the zabaleen as central stakeholders. They noted that
capital-intensive, high-tech, and high-energy solutions were inappropriate. Rather, the work of the

626 I JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS I Vol. 36/No. S2/2014

zabaleen should be be improved by eliminating undesirable human costs (Haynes & El-Hakim, 1979,
p. 106).
In the early 1980s, local and international agencies started projects in the Moqattam village to
improve living and work conditions. Cleaner work methods and on-site recycling were to add more
sanitary and profitable jobs. The local Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE) set
up a composting plant for pig manure and organic waste (Kamel, 1994).4 In 1988 a rag recycling
unit was built (Aziz, 2004, p. 14). Its activities included literacy, job training, and health programs
(Kamel, 1994, pp. 118). Municipal (electricity, water) and social services (clinics, schools) were
established. Individual families slowly replaced their tin shacks with two- to three-story (later even
higher) concrete buildings where humans and animals lived in separate quarters. In the 1980s the
community grew to about 17,000 residents (Assaad & Garas, 1993/94, p. 1). By the early 1990s the
zabaleen community had become a neighborhood of its own right (Kamel 1994, p. 128). Despite
remaining hardships and poverty, the quarter prospered.

GOVERNANCE, CONTROL AND PROFIT

In 1984 the cities of Cairo and Giza, overwhelmed by waste problems, founded the Cairo and
Giza Cleansing and Beautification authorities (CCBA, GCBA) to design comprehensive metropolitan
solutions (Kamel, 2009). As an early step they began to license garbage routes. The zabaleen now
had to pay the municipality as well as the wahiya. They were responsible for renewing their licenses.
For the first time zabaleen were integrated into municipal webs of control and supervision. Licenses
could be issued, revoked, or refused renewal. Regimes of control and surveillance were added to
earlier policies of neglect. However, control did not replace neglect. Instead they were two features
of a layered field of modes of engagement authorities employed in seemingly random ways to
circumscribe the zabaleens work.
In 1990 authorities banned the use of donkey carts for garbage collection. The presence of
overloaded shaky donkey carts was deemed offensive to upper-class residents and tourists, and seen
as obstacles for traffic. For the zabaleen, who are largely illiterate, without drivers licenses and funds
for pick-up trucks, this ban was a serious blow (Fahmi & Sutton, 2010). As a response, zabaleen
entered into small cooperatives to purchase vehicles. Some hired drivers. In the end the rule was more
strictly enforced in upper-class quarters than elsewhere, resulting in a certain stratification among the
garbage collectors. Those who could invest in vehicles could continue to service upscale quarters.
Those without funds had to withdraw or remain in less affluent areas. This regulation signified a
combination between earlier methods of regulation with emerging ones of exclusion. As car owners,
zabaleen were integrated into global economic circuits. Also in the 1990s authorities established
composting plants which could have hurt the zabaleen. Yet, ten years later Laila Kamel noted that
the policy led to a trail of poorly managed, poorly operated, poorly maintained plants and facilities
which ground to a halt, or years later were at a standstill. Many had become obsolete after five
years of operation and others still glistened with their original coat of paint, never having been
used! (2009)

Nonetheless, some larger companies profited from installing these plants. Even as cars ultimately
eased the garbage collectors work, the composting plants aimed to appropriate a share of the
zabaleens livelihood.
The search for waste solutions turned increasingly to high-tech, high-energy, and high-cost methods. Instead of improving the zabaleens recycling operationswhich included facilities and networks for aluminum, plastic, cloth, paper, cardboard, tin, bones, glass, and organic wasteauthorities
marginalized the zabaleen (Kamel, 2009). Regardless, in the late 1990s zabaleen were estimated to
handle about 30%40% of Cairos garbage, about 3,000 tons per day (of a total of about 9,00010,000
tons, produced by 14 million residents; Aziz, 2004, p. 9; Kamel, 2009).
By 2003 about 30,000 zabaleen lived in the Moqattam community (Rashed, 2003b). About 70,000
garbage collectors serviced metropolitan Cairo (Epstein, 2006). In 2000 local companies were hired

I Cairos Garbage Collectors and Neoliberal Urban Politics I 627

to take the waste of poorer quarters to public dumpsites where it was burned, producing smoke and
pollution (Kamel, 2009). Expanding consumer cultures produced ever more waste. Garbage mounds,
smoke over the city, and the pressure to remain globally competitive forced authorities to devise
more comprehensive solutions. In 2002 Cairo and Giza decided to contract multinational waste
management companies (Rashed, 2002a) to address this crisis. Alexandria had signed a contract with
a French company in 2001 (Rashed, 2002a). In the negotiations for these contracts the zabaleen were
ignored as central stakeholders (Aziz, 2004, p. 10; Rashed, 2002a). Their expertise was disregarded
and licenses were revoked or not renewed (Fahmi & Sutton, 2010; Kovach, 2003). In June 2002 the
Cairo governor contracted two Spanish firms to collect about 8,000 tons of garbage per day in parts
of the city. The two companies were to receive LE 115 million per year for the next 15 years. Two
Italian companies were to be hired for other quarters. Upon hearing this news, the zabaleen were up
in arms. They asked to be included in contracts, but officials refused. The foreign companies ventured
into a potentially profitable niche of the market (Fahmi & Sutton, 2010). These companies were
expected to collect household garbage, clean the streets, manage existing fertilizer factories, service
medical waste, and construct a sanitary dump (Rashed, 2002a). The zabaleen were desperate. One
man pleaded, we want the garbage because it is our lifeline (Rashed, 2002a). The new contracts
stipulated that there was to be no more door-to-door waste collection (as the zabaleen did). Instead,
containers were placed on streets for households to deposit their waste (Rashed, 2002a). Residents
were angered by this inconvenience (Rashed, 2003c). Companies were required to recycle only 20%
of the waste (Kamel, 2009). When the Giza governorate announced its new waste contracts, some
zabaleen staged a demonstration. Three men were arrested when they planned a meeting for the
zabaleen to organize to face this attack on their livelihood (Rashed, 2003b).
The new system was plagued by problems which largely resulted from its one-size-fits-all operational schemes. Residents were angered as they now paid more for less service (Boyd, 2008,
p. 48; Rashed, 2002a, 2003b). Heavy company vehicles were too large to enter small residential alleys (Fahmi & Sutton, 2010) and public garbage receptacles were stolen (Boyd, 2008, p. 48; Kamel,
2009). Zabaleen and other scavengers moved through the city at night mining containers and leaving
a mess (Kamel, 2009). The companies had difficulty finding workers, as few were willing to work
at the pay they offered (Kamel, 2009; Iskander, 2009). A cycle of arguments, fines, neglect, and
strikes resulted. Some zabaleen negotiated informal arrangements with the companies, whereby they
would collect garbage door to door, and were given access to parts of the garbage in return for fees
or services (Rashed, 2003a). Zabaleen were contracted for some routes. Many households that could
afford it returned to their zabaleen for reliable and convenient services. Garbage wars lingered and
the waste situation deteriorated. The zabaleen recognized the shortcomings of the new system, and
reclaimed as much of their former territories and work as possible.
Experts proposed solutions whereby the zabaleen would be (formally) integrated in a comprehensive system with the companies (Rashed, 2002a). In 2003 Laila Kamel explained: These contracts
are costing the city big money. Why not spend just 10 percent of such as budget to upgrade the
Zabaleen system? (quoted in Fahmi & Sutton, 2010, p. 1773). In the meanwhile a conflict erupted
in Giza between Italian International Environmental Services (IES) and the governorate. Officials
accused IES of not providing proper services. IES insisted that they were not paid the stipulated sum
and hence had to cut down on services (Rashed, 2004). The streets became dirtier. IES workers went
on strike and the respective bosses argued for two years (Rashed, 2004). Ultimately the zabaleen
weathered setbacks by way of international companies and bounced back to earlier levels of activity.
By early 2009 they were processing 6,0007,000 tons of waste daily (private companies collected
an additional 2,000 tons per day; Slackman, 2009a; Williams, 2009).
The new waste system with its trucks and workers clad in colorful uniforms channeled considerable
sums into the pockets of both local and global businesses. Stripped of their work and autonomy, the
zabaleens only way to return to city streets, at least in the official plan, was as uniformed small
wheels in the new powerful waste machinery (Iskander, 2009). The new system, however, was flawed,
because it had not reckoned with local conditions. By 2008 the zabaleen had regained much of their
earlier central position in the citys waste management system. They continued to service about a
third of Cairos waste as they worked alongside private companies (Boyd, 2008).

628 I JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS I Vol. 36/No. S2/2014

Despite persistent attempts to marginalize their livelihood, the zabaleen persevered, improved their
community, and refined their work methods. Some invested in their dwellings and some buildings
grew to five or six stories. In 2001 the AGCCD opened the local Recycling School (Iskander,
2009). Conceptualized for older boys, the school teaches literacy and math, computer skills, arts,
advanced recycling skills, and health and industrial safety issues (Aziz, 2004, p. 21). Keeping up
with consumer developments, younger zabaleen engage the next recycling challenge: electronics and
their (valuable) ingredients. One young man noted that as Egyptian society evolved and computers
or cell phones found their way to the garbage collectors, the ingenuity of the zabaleen is stretched
to keep pace with what is produced (Smith, 2005).

VIOLENT POLITICS
Cairos municipal policies have repeatedly demonstrated an undefined but persistent long-term
vision to further exclude the zabaleen from waste management. Yet no plan was developed of how
to fill the void they would leave. Little attention was paid to the fact that excluding the zabaleen
would produce ecological risks and challenges as huge amounts of additional waste would need to
be deposited in landfills or incinerated. Driven by blind faith in technology, and greed for lucrative
jobs and contracts for a few privileged brokers, authorities issued further regulations that limited the
participation of the zabaleen, but shiny trucks and colorfully clad workers were not enough to replace
traditional waste management systems [that] are embedded in realities which are too complex for
official, conventional systems to understand. They spring from organic relationships between the
people who run them and their city . . . They provide the poorest and most destitute segments of
society with incomes, livelihoods, trades, occupations and economic growth opportunities which
no other sector provides. (Kamel, 2009)

In the face of ongoing conflicts, arguments, and failure, two waste companies working in Greater
Cairo had folded their operations by 2009 (McGrath, 2009). Remaining contracts were continuously
renegotiated (Afify, 2010). In the meantime, garbage proliferated as Cairo experienced rapid consumption increases fostered by mushrooming consumer cultures. Many argued that only the inclusion
of the zabaleen and their effective system could solve the problem (Kamel, 2009; Rashed, 2002a;
Loza & Moharem, 2009).
The precarious situation of the Moqattam garbage collectors was exacerbated by real estate
speculation and a construction boom that engulfed the Moqattam plateau situated immediately above
the garbage town. Garbage collectors, recyclers and producers of recycled items were viewed with
suspicion and marked as polluters of space and air. With the opening of the Al-Azhar Park in 2005,
and the ambitious Cairo Financial Center under construction nearby, the Moqattam community
became flanked below by the park and by upscale residential communities above. Not surprisingly,
investors turned their eyes on the community (Fahmi & Sutton, 2010). As a first step, presenting
what they regarded as an improvement of the community, the Cairo governorate tried to remove
recycling procedures and animal husbandry to Qattameya, a desert settlement 25 kilometers outside
the city (Fahmi & Sutton, 2010, p. 1771).5 This move constituted a logistical nightmare for zabaleen
families. It meant that men would have to leave for the city early in the morning while women would
ready children in Moqattam for school, then travel 25 kilometers to Qattameya with their very young
and older children to sort garbage and tend to animals. Other plans foresaw the relocation of the
entire community to this desert location.6
The 2009 swine flu (H1N1) provided an unexpected chance for another blow at the zabaleen.
Based on no scientific evidence, and against the counsel of experts, the Egyptian government decided
that pigs were to blame for the swine flu, even though no Egyptian pigs were infected (Stino, 2009).
Before anybody had contracted the disease in Egypt, the government ordered the slaughter of the
entire pig population (Whitaker, 2009). In May 2009 an estimated 300,000 pigs were killed (Whitaker,
2009; Slackman, 2009a; Williams, 2009).7 After the slaughter, almost 1,000 cases of H1N1 were
reported in Egypt (Williams, 2009). The pig massacre signifies the single largest blow in the attacks

I Cairos Garbage Collectors and Neoliberal Urban Politics I 629

on the zabaleen; unlike the car rule or the contracting of foreign waste companies, this blow was
final. There was no room for maneuvering. The pigs, a central source of income (raised and sold in
6-month cycles), were irreplaceable.
Fierce debates ensued. Many zabaleen saw this as one more governmental measure to eliminate
their jobs and push them out of the Moqattam settlement. Some observers commented that the
slaughter reflected the growing influence of Islamist groups over the government and the attempt to
eliminate the livelihood of the largely Christian zabaleen (Whitaker, 2009; Michael, 2009). As the
government came under attack for the pig slaughter, they switched their rationale for the massacre
away from preventing disease to improving the zabaleens lives. An official at the infectious disease
department of the Ministry of Agriculture explained: We want them to live a better live, humanely
treated; its a difficult life (Slackman, 2009a). Some zabaleen received compensation for their pigs,
but how long does a limited amount of money last? The zabaleens response was straightforward:
with no pigs to feed, they stopped collecting organic waste (Slackman, 2009b). Some stopped
collecting garbage altogether, because pigs had been their central source of income. Garbage was left
to rot in the streets. They killed the pigs, let them clean the city, a former garbage man remarked
(Slackman, 2009b). Garbage mounds and a garbage crisis built up. What seems like a predictable
consequence of the pig massacre came as a surprise to authorities who were apparently puzzled
by this dirty aftermath. This government-made garbage crisis illustrates how short-sighted and
disadvantageous the contracts with the foreign companies had been, as they were unable to pick up
the zabaleens load (Kansouh-Habib, 2009a).
The pig slaughter and other policies regarding the zabaleen are not only framed by neoliberal
economic policies, but also reflect religious politics as increasingly powerful Islamic political forces
target (poorer) Christian constituencies and their livelihood. The slaughter symbolizes the growing
sectarianism of the late Mubarak regime and its overall lax protection of Christians (e.g., the massacre
in an Alexandria Church on January 1, 2011; see Fawzi, 2012). Although Muslims and Christians
stood side by side during the revolutionary days in early 2011, this national honeymoon did not
last long; violence against Copts has flared up again and again in post-revolutionary Egypt (e.g.,
Suerbaum, 2011; Ezzat, 2012; Fawzi, 2012). In early March of 2011 Copts from Manshiet Nasser,
many of them zabaleen, demonstrated against discrimination by blocking the busy Salah Salem urban
highway (Suerbaum, 2011). The encounter between demonstrators and drivers turned violent. The
army moved in to control the situation. This conflict left thirteen people dead and over 100 injured.
A number of buildings in the community were burned (Suerbaum, 2011). A few months later, in
October 2011, Copts demonstrated in front of the TV building. This conflict ended with 20 people
killed, and a growing sense that Copts had gained little in the revolution and were still under attack.
Individual attacks on Copts or Coptic churches occur again and again (Ezzat, 2012). Copts remain
apprehensive about their position in the new Egypt (Fawzi, 2012).
ENFORCED NEOLIBERALISM
In recent decades Egyptian authorities, elites, and investors have created visions, issued projects,
and enforced elements of Cairos globalized future. They planned quarters and edifices for middleand upper-class consumers and foreign tourists and attempted to beautify upscale quarters of the
cities. They tried to clean up unsightly evidence of popular lifestyles and poverty, and relocated
people and activities to urban fringes. They abandoned certain urban quarters and left them to decline
or to lower-class use. Many plans and projects intentionally or unintentionally worked against the
interests of poor and marginalized groups. Globally modeled high-tech solutions, urban patterns that
privilege rapid circulation, and consumption-oriented projects took precedence over local forms,
potentials, and livelihoods.
The case of the zabaleen illustrates the complexity and dynamic nature of local economic configurations and how they engage, oppose, or sometimes undermine high-tech and capital-intensive
schemes. Local stakeholders with their experiences, their continuous and constant presence in urban
spaces, and their sophisticated analyses of local economies and communal needs aptly identify ruptures and fissures in project designs and their legal frameworks and adapt their work and activities

630 I JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS I Vol. 36/No. S2/2014

accordingly. Authorities in turn initiate further steps and regulations that aim at tighter control and
surveillance of such groups, often giving rise to mounting tensions and frequent struggles. For years
the garbage collectors were able to remake their work and technologies to either integrate or circumvent such efforts. For years the ironic scheme to privatize waste management (which had always
been private) largely failed. Ultimately, local inflections of neoliberal plans frequently differ from
planned outcomes, when established stakeholders insist on their continued role and participation
(Kanna, 2010).
Without disputing the powerful nature of top-down economic policies and their forceful implementation, the zabaleens experience illustrates how flawed, inadequately planned, and badly carried out
many such projects are. Poor urban residents do not easily concede their livelihood to international
corporations, and will do whatever it takes to maintain their stake in the urban economy (Sims, 2010,
p. 91). Through a superior understanding of their city and its dynamics, and their continued presence
or art of presence on city streets and spaces, disenfranchised groups exploit the contradictions
of neoliberal schemes. It would be nave, however, to think that their efforts are always crowned
with success, in particular when governments, as the Egyptian pig massacre shows, are willing to
employ violent means to destroy poor peoples livelihoods. While the Mubarak regime scored a
partial success in its attempts to violently appropriate the zabaleens sources of revenue, one can only
speculate how exactly the anger, frustration, and humiliation experienced by such disenfranchised
groups fed into the 2011 uprising.

CONCLUDING REMARKS
In this article I examined a field of ongoing struggle between urban residents and authorities
in Cairo where the forceful implementation of neoliberal policies and projects causes tension and
suffering. For decades individuals and communities have been the target of government policies
and control (licensing); urban improvement schemes (regulation of vehicles and routes, enforced
relocation); neoliberal projects (transference of local sources of income to global corporations);
irrational, violent and destructive official measures (the pig massacre); and detrimental future plans
(removal of the Muqattam community to Qattameya). In addition, they have faced daily unpredictable
encounters with corrupt officials. Over the years the zabaleen resisted, circumvented, or unmade these
constant attacks on their livelihood and dignity. Faulty official planning of projects unwittingly often
helped their efforts and allowed them to either adapt their work or successfully reinsert themselves
into the ruptures and fissures of plans and projects. However, as much as the zabaleen have been
able to change aspects of government policies, their situation remains precarious. The irrationality
and violence of the pig massacre illustrates their ultimate powerlessness vis-`a-vis government forces.
Looking at more than two decades of strugglefor nothing more than access to the citys waste
the overall frustration and anger built up over time by one disenfranchised urban group becomes
apparent. Similarly obvious is the fact that the zabaleen were never mute or docile recipients of
detrimental policies. Instead, by way of the art of presence they struggled for minute gains of
territories and possibilities based on the understanding that large-scale and more visible resistance
(e.g., the arrest of those who wanted to organize a demonstration in Giza protesting contracts with
foreign waste management companies) was futile. Understanding the corruption and violence of
the Mubarak-era police force, the zabaleen and other disenfranchised groups preferred to solve their
problems locally, incrementally, and possibly beyond the view of the government. While the zabaleen
keenly understand the workings of the government, neither past nor present regimes have ever spent
much thought reflecting about the pent-up anger, frustration, and humiliation of ordinary citizens.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: An earlier version of this paper was presented at a workshop organized by Najib Hourani

and Mona Fawaz at the European University Institute in Florence in April 2011. I am grateful to Mona and Najib for
organizing this amazing workshop. My thanks also go to the workshop participants for their helpful comments and
discussions, and to Ahmed Kanna and Najib Hourani for organizing this special issue. I greatly benefitted from the
insightful remarks of the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Urban Affairs that helped me to improve this article. I

I Cairos Garbage Collectors and Neoliberal Urban Politics I 631

would also like to thank Laila Kamel for introducing me to the Moqattam Zabaleen community back in the late 1980s
and arranging my participation as a voluntary teachers aid there. Finally my thanks go to my parents for their support,
and to my daughters, Tamima and Tala, for their love and patience.

ENDNOTES
1 This paper is based on years of fieldwork conducted in Cairo since 1987. I also worked as a voluntary teacher in a
school attached to one of the Coptic Churches on the Moqattam Garbage community from 1987 to 1990. Data for
the recent neoliberal controversies are largely taken from various Egyptian and international media.
2 Holston notes about Brazil: What I call a misrule of law: a system of stratagem and bureaucratic complication
deployed by both state and subject to obfuscate problems, neutralize opponents, and above all legalize the illegal.
This law has little to do with justice, and obeying it reduces people to a category of low esteem. Thus, for friends,
everything; for enemies, citizens, the poor, squatters, marginals, migrants, inferiors, communists, strikers, and other
others, the law. For them, law means humiliation, vulnerability, and bureaucratic nightmare (2008, p. 19). Much
of this applied to Mubarak-era Egypt.
3 By 1979 the zabaleen were recycling 2000 tons of paper per month. They processed cotton and rags to use in
upholstery. Tin was reworked into toys, vessels, and spare parts for machinery. Organic waste and pig droppings
were processed into compost (Haynes & El-Hakim, 1979, p. 103).
4 Over the years, USAID, the Ford Foundation, the European Union, private local and international donors, and local
and global companies sponsored projects in the Moqattam community (Aziz, 2004, p. 14).
5 Qattameya is a desert development were authorities in recent years have resettled residents from other poor
neighborhoods (Fahmi & Sutton, 2010).
6 Zabaleen were not the only group slated for economic elimination. Potters in Old Cairo had their electricity cut
and hence their livelihood, when officials blamed bad air quality exclusively on them (Bell, 2000). Others were
similarly targeted for removal or robbed of their livelihoods or crucial services (see Ghannan, 2002; Hamdy, 2002).
7 In addition to the garbage collectors, others who raised pigs, or processed or butchered pork, were robbed overnight
of their livelihoods (Williams, 2009).

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Petra Kuppinger is Professor of Anthropology at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois. She
has conducted research on topics of cities, spaces, globalization and consumerism in Cairo, Egypt.
More recently she has been working on issues of space, culture and Islam in Germany. She is the
President-Elect (201214) of SUNTA. Her recent publications include Himmelstochter: A Muslima
in German Public Spheres, Journal of Middle East Womens Studies, 2011; Vibrant Mosques:
Space, Planning and Informality in Germany, Built Environment, 2011; Factories, Office Suites,
Defunct and Marginal Spaces: Mosques in Stuttgart, Germany, in Reshaping Cities, M. Guggenheim
and O. Soderstrom (Eds.), 2010; and Globalization and Exterritoriality in Metropolitan Cairo, The
Geographical Review, 2006.