Read

Error message

Notice: Undefined index: base_url in include_once() (line 125 of /home3/occupyco/public_html/dev/sites/default/settings.php).

User menu

Search form

Rebel Cities 16: Cape Town Housing Movement Uses Occupy Tactics to Battle Apartheid's Legacy

Rebel Cities 16: Cape Town Housing Movement Uses Occupy Tactics to Battle Apartheid's Legacy
Thu, 11/29/2018 - by Steve Rushton

This is Part 15 in a series about Radical Municipalism looking at ways people worldwide are organizing in their cities to build power from the bottom up. Read Part 1 (Brazil), Part 2 (Rojava), Part 3 (Chiapas), Part 4 (Warsaw), Part 5 (Bologna), Part 6 (Jackson, Miss.), Part 7(Athens), Part 8 (Warsaw & New York), Part 9 (Reykjavík), Part 10 (Rosario, Argentina), Part 11 (Newham, UK), Part 12 (Valparaiso, Chile), Part 13 (Porto Alegre, Brazil), Part 14 (Montevideo, Uruguay), and Part 15 (Venezuela).

“It was an important milestone and victory for poor and working class people in the struggle for decent affordable housing,” members of a housing activist group in Cape Town, South Africa, called Reclaim the City, said following a recent municipal government announcement to build hundreds of social housing apartments in the Waterfront area of the city center.

This news this fall was testament to the pressure mounted by the housing movement that continues to make ground in a city still strongly divided by racial inequality. Founded two years ago, Reclaim the City employs a broad range of tactics that include occupying government land and leading a popular participative movement of tenants and workers. Their movement works outside the city's institutions to pressure action, demonstrating an effective pathway and model for radical municipalism.

The long walk to equality

Social movements that succeed pushing cities to build social housing in central, desirable locations is an achievement anywhere. In Cape Town, it is more remarkable and desperately needed. The city is built on structural racism, which was set into law during South Africa's apartheid period of 1948 to 1994.

Now, a quarter of a century after the fall of apartheid, the city still faces a long journey toward economic equality. The legacy of apartheid remains especially visible in the realm of housing, which makes Cape Town's decision even more notable a milestone.

South Africa is hardly alone. Housing reveals racial inequality in many global cities. Groups excluded by race and class often either live in cramped conditions in city centers where they face the threat of eviction from gentrification – a process many see as a form of social cleansing. Elsewhere, the poorest live on cities' outskirts in shanty towns, favelas, slums and projects.

South Africa's excluded live in townships. Under apartheid and following the 1950 Group Areas Act, South Africans were divided by racial groups. The most prestigious homes were reserved for whites only. People of mixed descent were allocated in less desirable housing. Black people native to South Africa were forced into townships with the worst living conditions. Even today, the towns lack running water and sanitation, and homes are often of poor quality, made from corrugated iron and other waste materials.

Inequality is particularly stark in Cape Town. Billionaires moor their super-yachts in the same Waterfront area where the new social houses are to be built. It is truly a tale of two cities: the whites with money shop and relax in the Waterfront area, while the predominantly poorer black population travels for hours to reach work in the same Waterfront area. This type of inequality has only been compounded by Cape Town's recent drought.

Occupying 'public land' to make it public

Reclaim the City was born in early 2016, founded by Ndifuna Ukwazi, a clinic of lawyers who advocate on behalf of social justice issues and provide information for community activism and human rights. Conceived of as a tenant and workers movement, its first aim was to pressure the government to turn publicly held land into social housing rather than sell it off to developers.

In autumn 2016, the local government was far from interested in listening to Reclaim the City. Members of the organization visited municipality offices to discuss turning the former site of a school into social housing. But the city refused to even come down from their offices for the meeting. So Reclaim the City occupied the building's lobby.

Reclaim the City has not only held sit-ins in government offices. They have also occupied empty publicly owned properties. One example is the abandoned Helen Bowden Nurse's Home, a Waterfront property occupation that Cape Town's premier wants to end.

In March 2017, people who lacked affordable housing occupied the buildings that formerly housed nurses. The site had been deemed suitable for social housing as early as 2012, but the Western Cape government had ignored the proposal.

Along with the occupation, Reclaim the City is also pushing through official channels. For instance, it wrote to the city's deputy mayor about converting a plot of public land in the Green Point area into public housing.

Ndifuna Ukwazi, which translates as "dare to know," carries out strategic litigation including cases aimed at pushing for the right to housing, and often takes claims from residents to challenge specific housing sales or evictions. Recently the group uncovered how the local government drastically undersold a large plot of Cape Town to a developer.

The occupied former nurses' home has become a focal point in the Cape Town housing struggle. Controversies surround the occupation; one being the unanswered questions around a dubiously expensive security contract taken out by the municipality. One of the security contractors is accused of murdering a Reclaim the City activist, Zamuxolo Dolophini.

In another matter of unanswered questions, researcher Crispian Olver is publicly asking whether Western Cape officials have something to hide, after he successfully got information about housing policies in cities across South Africa – but was denied his requests by the Western Cape administration.

Progress towards reclaiming Cape Town

Taking small steps, one at a time, Reclaim the City and its allies are gradually forcing Cape Town to move away from its ongoing housing apartheid. The September victory in the Waterfront area follows an announcement last summer that Cape Town would build social housing in 10 other inner city locations.

Brett Herron, who sits on the mayoral committee responsible for managing housing and transport, called the city's decision to address housing inequality a u-turn in Western Cape policy. Meanwhile, Helen Zille, the Premier of Western Cape, responded to Reclaim the City's occupation of the former nurses' home with a comment revealing just how out of touch many in power still remain touch: "The illegal occupation of Helen Bowden Nurses Home... remains a real threat to our ability to proceed with affordable housing.”

Read: Part 1 (Brazil), Part 2 (Rojava), Part 3 (Chiapas), Part 4 (Warsaw), Part 5 (Bologna), Part 6 (Jackson, Miss.), Part 7(Athens), Part 8 (Warsaw & New York), Part 9 (Reykjavík), Part 10 (Rosario, Argentina), Part 11 (Newham, UK), Part 12 (Valparaiso, Chile), Part 13 (Porto Alegre, Brazil), Part 14 (Montevideo, Uruguay), and Part 15 (Venezuela)

 

3 WAYS TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT

ONE-TIME DONATION

Just use the simple form below to make a single direct donation.

DONATE NOW

MONTHLY DONATION

Be a sustaining sponsor. Give a reacurring monthly donation at any level.

GET SOME MERCH!

Now you can wear your support too! From T-Shirts to tote bags.

SHOP TODAY

Sign Up

Article Tabs

prison reform, incarceration rates, private prisons, for-profit prisons, white supremacy, enslavement, climate justice, racial justice, Green New Deal

The year 2020 has caused many white people to realize we live in a racist system. The Green New Deal is about systemic change for all, and deconstructing racism must be front and central in this agenda.

coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro, COVID-19 deaths, downplaying coronavirus

By infecting three of the world’s most right-wing leaders, the coronavirus underscored not only the incompetence and irresponsibility of their governments – but the truth that their brand of populism doesn't keep people safe.

COVID-19, corporate bailouts, corporate welfare, corporate destruction

Corporations are not "too big to fail" and, when they commit crimes, they are not "too big to jail." As David Whyte writes in his new book, "Ecocide: Kill the Corporation Before It Kills Us," the moment is now to rein in out-of-control corporate power.

The world has lost an incredible thinker and doer. I have lost an amazing friend. A void exists where before it was filled with David's optimism, humour and joy.

Kevin Zeese speaks at a rally for Chelsea Manning. By Ellen Davidson.

Kevin fought to bring truth every day. We must not lose this struggle.

prison reform, incarceration rates, private prisons, for-profit prisons, white supremacy, enslavement, climate justice, racial justice, Green New Deal

The year 2020 has caused many white people to realize we live in a racist system. The Green New Deal is about systemic change for all, and deconstructing racism must be front and central in this agenda.

coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro, COVID-19 deaths, downplaying coronavirus

By infecting three of the world’s most right-wing leaders, the coronavirus underscored not only the incompetence and irresponsibility of their governments – but the truth that their brand of populism doesn't keep people safe.

COVID-19, corporate bailouts, corporate welfare, corporate destruction

Corporations are not "too big to fail" and, when they commit crimes, they are not "too big to jail." As David Whyte writes in his new book, "Ecocide: Kill the Corporation Before It Kills Us," the moment is now to rein in out-of-control corporate power.

The world has lost an incredible thinker and doer. I have lost an amazing friend. A void exists where before it was filled with David's optimism, humour and joy.

Kevin Zeese speaks at a rally for Chelsea Manning. By Ellen Davidson.

Kevin fought to bring truth every day. We must not lose this struggle.