Cape City, South Africa – Thandi Jolingana, 46, beams with delight as she exhibits off the lavatory she inbuilt her corrugated iron shack, after her husband went out to alleviate himself on the communal rest room one night time and was robbed at gunpoint.
Jolingana lives in a shantytown referred to as Taiwan, on the sting of Cape City’s Khayelitsha township – a spot the place a non-public rest room is a luxurious.
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“I’m a wealthy woman,” she jokes, mentioning that she could possibly be residing extra comfortably, had been it not for the a number of unemployed relations she has to help financially, along with her two youngsters.
Jolingana works as a nurse’s assistant. Together with her public servant’s wage, she is likely one of the few within the casual settlement who can afford indoor plumbing. In the meantime, her neighbours make use of a row of outside bogs that metropolis authorities provide on the charge of about one cubicle per each 10 households. For Jolingana, the general public amenities are a continuing reminder of the municipality’s damaged guarantees.
The dearth of providers within the settlement has once more come below the highlight after Cape City Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis introduced controversial plans to construct a wall to maintain criminals at bay alongside the N2 freeway, which abuts a collection of townships, together with Cape City Worldwide Airport.
“I’m stunned they’ve acquired cash for a wall however no cash to purchase land,” Jolingana stated, referring to guarantees to relocate her group to an space the place they’d be supplied with correct housing.
Such is her unhappiness with providers in Khayelitsha that she solely accepts work in better-equipped, previously white suburbs through the company that employs her. When her five-year-old son is sick, she travels greater than 20km (12 miles) to the rich suburb of Bellville – a previously white-only suburb – to keep away from lengthy queues and overcrowding on the nearest day hospital.
“At [the] trauma [ward], you will note the folks mendacity on the ground, sitting since yesterday, so I can’t take it,” she says.
Guiding Al Jazeera by a maze of slender alleys within the township, Jolingana illustrates the well being and security dangers of the prevailing amenities. At a row of communal bogs about 50 metres (164 toes) from her residence, residents put in a cement basis below the bogs after one toppled over in 2018, trapping a lady inside. The constructions are additionally weak to the flooding that spills into the settlement from the encircling wetlands every winter, she says.
Residents say town’s cash needs to be used to repair issues like these, as an alternative of constructing a pricey wall.
Mayor Hill-Lewis, a member of the Democratic Alliance (DA) social gathering that’s a part of the nationwide unity authorities (GNU), instructed town council on January 29 that Cape City intends to spend 108 million rand ($6.5m) on the crime-fighting initiative referred to as the N2 Edge challenge. However native media studies say the challenge might truly value as a lot as 180 million rand ($10.8m).
Moreover the wall, the challenge additionally contains safety cameras, improved lighting, security boundaries for leisure areas, and metro police patrols, the mayor stated.
‘A far greater downside’
Khayelitsha and surrounding townships have lengthy been stricken by crime, just lately prompting President Cyril Ramaphosa to deploy the army to staunch a wave of gang-related violence within the Western Cape, however residents say authorities solely listen when middle-class motorists are the victims.
One explicit incident in December drew nationwide headlines after robbers stabbed a retired white instructor, Karin van Aardt, 64, to loss of life on the infamous N2 street shortly after she and her husband had landed in Cape City for a vacation from one other province.
Weeks earlier than, members of parliament had spoken out in regards to the risks travellers to Cape City face close to the airport.
Liezl van der Merwe, an MP from the Inkatha Freedom Social gathering, which is a part of the GNU, referred to as for seen policing at visitors lights and intersections recognized to be crime hotspots, whereas one other coalition accomplice, the Freedom Entrance Plus, needed broken freeway fencing to be repaired, defective safety cameras to be restored and everlasting armed patrols to be dispatched to high-risk areas.
“The issue is way greater and stretches a lot wider, although,” FF Plus social gathering chief Pieter Mulder stated. “The homicide and crime wave on the airport is indicative of what’s occurring across the nation.”
In line with official statistics offered in parliament, 42 felony instances had been reported to police at Cape City Worldwide Airport between April 1, 2024 and March 31, 2025.
The Western Cape spokesperson for the South African Nationwide Roads Company additionally instructed native media final 12 months that alongside the N2 and close by R300 freeway, the company had recorded 564 crime-related occasions in 2024, and 362 between January and August 2025.
That is nonetheless a tiny fraction of the crimes reported nationwide in South Africa, which has one of many highest crime and homicide charges on this planet outdoors a conflict zone.
5 of the ten cities with the very best crime charges worldwide are present in South Africa, according to Statista.
South Africa’s ‘Berlin Wall’
Nonetheless, Mayor Hill-Lewis drew widespread condemnation when he introduced his safety response in January, with critics accusing him of avoiding the social points going through shack dwellers.
The wall, particularly, got here below hearth.
The construction is anticipated to be three metres (10 toes) excessive and span a nine-kilometre (5.6 mile) stretch from the airport, which has been dubbed “the hell run” after years of violent assaults alongside this route.
Members of the African Nationwide Congress (ANC), the main social gathering within the GNU, additionally criticised the plans.
Ndithini Tyhido, the ANC’s prime council official in Cape City, criticised Hill-Lewis for planning to construct the “South African Berlin Wall” and urged the federal government to speculate the cash in community-based crime prevention, similar to growing stipends for neighbourhood watch teams, as an alternative.
Councillor Chad Davids from the Good Social gathering, one other GNU member, stated town was “wealthy on paper, administratively damaged, and morally confused in its priorities”.
“We’re instructed budgets are ‘record-breaking’, but clinics stay incomplete, hearth stations are delayed, housing developments are stalled, roads are unfinished, and group amenities are deteriorating,” he stated.
Housing backlog
The Metropolis of Cape City has received plaudits for good governance and stellar service supply within the rich metropolis centre, the place vacationers take pleasure in its first-world facilities.
However critics say its track record with Black township residents has been patchy, very like that of the ANC-led nationwide authorities.
In 2010, the ANC’s Youth League lodged a criticism with the South African Human Rights Fee after town put in unenclosed bogs in one other casual settlement in Khayelitsha, referred to as Makhaza.
The bogs had been meant to be short-term whereas town accomplished a housing challenge, however a dispute broke out after a bunch of residents refused to surround the bogs themselves, as had been agreed with group leaders.
A courtroom ultimately compelled town to pay for the enclosures.
Town has additionally been criticised for its gradual response to a housing backlog in locations like Khayelitsha, the place Jolingana has lived in a shack since 1987.
Talks a few housing challenge to accommodate Taiwan residents started in 2016, and aimed to relocate 4,500 households.
A group steering committee was fashioned two years later to information the method, however Jolingana, a member of the committee, says a metropolis official solely attended a gathering final 12 months for the primary time and promised that the transfer would begin in February this 12 months.
To date, that hasn’t occurred.
‘It’s a political sport’
Cape City’s poorer residents accuse the native authorities of favouring its political strongholds relating to the allocation of assets similar to housing – particularly these residing in traditionally white and “Colored” neighbourhoods.
This notion is fuelled by the truth that the Metropolis of Cape City is run by the principally white DA social gathering in one in all solely two provinces which have escaped the nationwide dominance of the ANC, the social gathering that led South Africa out of racist apartheid rule and into democracy in 1994.
“If town is saying they’re constructing the wall to guard folks of the N2, why can’t they take the folks out of the world to a spot the place there’s no crime?” requested Nomqondiso Ntsethe, a 65-year-old pensioner, who shares a shack in Taiwan with 13 youngsters and grandchildren.
“It’s a political sport,” she stated. “They’re separating the poor from the wealthy. It’s segregation.”
The Metropolis of Cape City referred Al Jazeera’s questions in regards to the Taiwan housing challenge to the provincial authorities, which in flip stated it handed the challenge over to town in September 2024.
Mayor Hill-Lewis, who final 12 months put town’s housing backlog at about 600,000, has remained defiant amid the most recent criticism.
On February 8, he posted a video on X exhibiting a broken-down fence alongside the N2 freeway and criticised the police and the nation’s street administration company for failing to maintain surrounding communities protected.
“This barrier was constructed 20 years in the past when the ANC was in control of Cape City – the identical social gathering now hysterically and hypocritically shouting about our plan to repair the safety barrier to maintain the folks of Cape City safer,” he stated.
The video additionally featured residents from a close-by casual settlement who supported the thought of erecting a wall subsequent to their dwellings.
Whereas the talk about his efforts continues to rage on-line, Jolingana and her neighbours are gearing up for a struggle to oppose the wall.
The Casual Settlements Discussion board, an area coalition, issued a rallying cry this week, calling on civil society teams to affix their “peaceable protest in opposition to insurance policies that undermine dignity and equality”.
It additionally appealed to legislation corporations and authorized practitioners to offer professional bono help of their battle “to make sure transparency, accountability and lawful governance”.
In the meantime, Jolingana lives with day by day reminders of the life she might have had.
“Even at work, my colleagues all the time ask, ‘When are you going to purchase a automobile?’ They don’t know my scenario. I all the time say that ‘In case you can put on my sneakers, I don’t assume it is going to fit your needs,’” she stated.
“In Jesus’s title, I can cope, as a result of there’s no different means. Sure, there’s no different means. I’m coping.”
