Richard Pithouse - The destruction of the Nomzamo settlement in Lwandle, Cape Town, has received an extraordinary degree of political and media attention, much of it noting the illegality and brutality of the eviction, and much of it sympathetic to the occupiers. Evictions, generally illegal and frequently violent, have been an everyday part of actually existing modes of urban governance in post-apartheid South Africa. Most of the major cities have units maintained for the sole purpose of mobilising state...
Threatened with mass eviction, the residents of the Joe Slovo settlement in Langa, Cape Town gathered outside of the South African Constitutional Court in Johannesburg on 21 August 2008 to appeal the judgement of High Court Judge Hlophe that would forcibly remove them to Delft, a township on the outskirts of Cape Town, to makeway for the completion of the N2 Gateway Housing Project. The featured clip below (part one), is of an earlier protest at the Cape High Court where residents air their...