On 7 and 8 January, the City of Cape Town’s Anti-Land Invasion Unit demolished more than 40 homes at the Marikana settlement in Philippi East. There has been ongoing conflict between the City and the residents who have settled on this plot of privately owned land just off Symphony Way.
Sibusiso Tshabalala
Feature | 15 January 2014
Kutala Mtyali's sits on the couch of her house, perhaps for the last day, and tries to piece together the ongoing saga of her 26 year struggle to keep her home. Family members help her with names and dates. She is on the brink of homelessness.
Jared Sacks
News | 9 December 2013
Several houses in Gugulethu were damaged by the heavy rainfall this weekend. Hombazi Fiphaza, a resident from Kanana Square informal settlement, said, “We go through the same thing everytime there is heavy rainfall … What pains me the most is watching the children suffer because of it, and there is nothing you can do to protect them from it.”
Nwabisa Pondoyi
News | 21 November 2013
On the edge of the university hamlet of Grahamstown, there’s a municipal dump where people discard trash. It’s far enough out of town to not smell the stench – or for most locals not to be reminded of the haunting plight of the poor who subsist off the waste.
Mandy de Waal
Feature | 20 November 2013
A fed-up Khayelitsha resident is anxious to know why the City of Cape Town is not making any provision for water and sanitation on her street.
Mary-Anne Gontsana
News | 28 August 2013
A survey done by the provincial department of human settlements showed that in 2010, the Cape Town Metro had almost as many informal settlements as the rest of the entire province.
Mary-Anne Gontsana
News | 14 August 2013
Shack fires are an unremitting scourge facing urban townships. In South Africa, between 2000 and 2010, over 230 000 people were made homeless by fires. Growing urban populations together with inadequate services, in particular electricity and water, means urban shack fires will continue to take their toll. There is an urgent need for effective solutions to address the major causes.
Fergus Turner
News | 5 August 2013
At every railway bridge from Observatory to Rondebosch there are homeless people who occupy the subways. They come from different backgrounds and have different reasons for why they do not have homes.
Pharie Sefali
News | 31 July 2013
Amelia Earnest met people who live on the streets of Cape Town. Some of them have been living outside since they were children. The City recently made it harder for them. Read the full story below the photographs.
Amelia Earnest
News | 30 July 2013
Amelia Earnest met people who live on the streets of Cape Town. Some of them have been living outside since they were children. The City recently made it harder for them. Read the full story below the photographs.
Amelia Earnest
News | 30 July 2013
Living conditions of Lonmin workers show how exploitation and neglect continue on South African platinum mines.
Raphael Chaskalson
Opinion | 17 July 2013
Some residents in Nyanga claim that the Department of Housing is not to blame for their housing problems.
Pharie Sefali
News | 10 July 2013
While Thembisa Maso, a KTC resident still waits for her house to be completed, Mbuyiselo Vena, her neighbour, is struggling day in and day out in a wheelchair after being on a housing waiting list for the past 20 years.
Mary-Anne Gontsana
News | 29 May 2013
The Democratic Alliance markets itself as an efficient and un-corrupt alternative to the ANC. It never hesitates to point out serious service delivery failures by the ANC. So it is interesting to see its responses to the Social Justice Coalition's criticisms of the City of Cape Town's handling of a major toilet supply contract in Khayelitsha.
Nathan Geffen
News | 30 April 2013
“I have to tie his leg to the couch. If I don’t he wanders away and I have to run around the whole of RR section in search of him, giving people a description of him and asking if anyone has seen a boy resembling my son.”
Mary-Jane Matsolo
News | 24 April 2013
When Premier Helen Zille was bitten by a rat last week, her spokesperson was quoted saying, “I know the City Bowl rats are mutant freaks of nature but if they’re starting to take nibbles out of people, we’re in trouble." However, as this story of a Khayelitsha baby bitten by a rat shows, in some parts of the City, rats are no laughing matter and rats "taking nibbles out of people" are not that unusual.
Mary-Jane Matsolo
News | 27 March 2013