Housing

Phillipi settlement battle highlights housing problems

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

Bank drives woman to brink of homelessness

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

“We’ve lost hope in our government”

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

Poverty and waste - the other side of Grahamstown

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

No tap and one toilet

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

Cape Town’s Informal Settlements keep growing

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

Fire detectors can help to prevent shack fires

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

Tension between homeless and residents in City’s southern suburbs

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

City installation displaces street people

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

City installation displaces street people

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

Nkaneng: sorry symbol of a century of neglect

Living conditions of Lonmin workers show how exploitation and neglect continue on South African platinum mines.

Raphael Chaskalson

Opinion | 17 July 2013

Homes vandalised in Nyanga housing dispute

Some residents in Nyanga claim that the Department of Housing is not to blame for their housing problems.

Pharie Sefali

News | 10 July 2013

Disabled and waiting for a house since 1992

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

Responding to criticism

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

How do you look after an autistic child when you live in a shack?

“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

Rats, that’s not funny: Khayelitsha child bitten by rat

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