One Lady in London: An Introduction to Informal Settlements & Khayelitsha

Welcome to Informal Settlements 101. In this post I’m going to attempt to explain informal settlements, or informal townships. They’re fairly complicated with a large history, and I still have many, many questions about them, but after two days of discussions and studies, I think I have a fairly decent grasp, so let’s start from the beginning.

Informal settlements began emerging in Capetown back when Apartheid was happening, right after the Group Areas act passed. This act, passed by South African government, called for the segregation of the city by race. Whites were able to remain in the city center, and blacks and colored were pushed out. As a result of the combination of both being exiled and the high levels of poverty, informal settlements began appearing. The best comparison for these settlements is slums of squatters. Shacks are made out of scraps, no water, plumbing or electricity, and very, very cramped together.

Even though Apartheid has passed, population in these settlements has exploded. They’re a quite common landing place for immigrants to Capetown, and the city, and these townships are growing exponentially. In my opinion, the most interesting part about the townships are that they are on public, government owned land the majority of the time, yet the city is doing very little to either close the settlements or improve them.

South Africa has a law where if you make less than R3,500 per month (equivalent to $350/month) you get to live in a government house for free. The problem with this program is that there is no ownership until 7 years after you’ve lived there, so the city does maintenance and, as you may expect, is very slow in doing that. The other issue is that these homes are far away from any activity or job centers. If you stay the full 7 years to gain ownership, most people sell the house and move back to the settlements where there are more people and more activity. Finally, the government has realized that these houses are not an efficient use of money as they don't actually move people out of poverty and started to put money into adding public services like water, plumbing and electricity in these settlements. The majority of them still do not have any services and rely on two taps for the whole settlement and a few port-o-potties along the exterior border.

For our studio, we’re focusing on the fastest growing and one of the largest settlements- Khayelitsha (pronounced KY-LEE-CHUH). Just some facts about Khayelitsha- currently the slum is home to 391,749 people. With it’s area of 14.95 square miles, the population density is over 26,000 people per square mile. These shacks are all one story, and roughly 15 square meters. Honestly, the bathroom my brother and I used growing up is about the size of these people’s entire house. Khayelitsha is nearly the same density as New York City, except they don't build up. Let’s let that sink in for a little bit.

Houses are made from scraps, most commonly corrugated iron and cardboard. Some have doors and windows, others just holes with pieces of fabric covering the opening. The majority of them have some sort of floor. A lot of the ones we went in had carpet scraps, other, much nicer ones, has a mismatch of title. There is minimal space between the shacks, which is one of the biggest problems as there is no access for emergency vehicles. Fires are extremely common as there is little space between homes and cardboard is extremely flammable. Just last year there was a fire that destroyed over 1,000 homes in an hour.

The government and lots of NGOs are realizing this and taking action to help improve the conditions. The government now funds the addition of public works, and NGOs have partnerships with the government to get more bang for their buck. The group Ben was from is in the process of reorganizing settlements. Since they grew quickly and organically, it’s just small pathways in between homes with no order or logic. His organization has come into three settlements where they literally take apart the shacks and move them around in order to create roads that eventually can be paved and open courtyard areas. In exchange for their participation and small buy in (families are asked to contribute a few hundred Rand to the project) the city has come in and put a tap and toilet in each of the homes, as well as an electrical outlet.

I had read about these settlements, but even that didn’t prepare me for what I actually saw. It’s devastatingly indescribable. These people are the epitome of poverty, living in “homes” with holes in the roof that could fall over is the wind blew too hard. And they’re everywhere, these settlements are MASSIVE. Everywhere you look, for miles, is just hundreds of thousands of people living in such squalor. The 391,000 number I quoted earlier is only one settlement. The most accurate estimation of the total number of settlements is around 300 in the city of Cape Town. Millions of people are living like this, just a few miles away from the V&A Waterfront- home to malls containing Gucci and Prada.

Today we went to three neighborhoods within Khayelitsha to talk to the community leaders (they have a surprisingly formal organization within each community) about problems they’re facing that we could potentially turn into projects. Hands down the biggest concern was safety. Since most don’t have electricity, and the ones who do only have 1 or 2 light bulbs in their house, outside at night it is pitch black. As a result, crime activity is extremely high. Many settlements have installed massive floodlights to light the streets at night in an attempt to reduce crime. One suggested project for us would be to look at these places where crime is most common and try to figure out why. Is it that it’s dark? Is it that the spaces are too small and enclosed? Is it because those aren’t heavily trafficked areas?

Another popular problem generated by residents was that the streets are way too narrow and need to be widened, so we may end up coming up with a plan to widen these streets. When I say narrow, I mean narrow. A few of the “streets” we walked through on our tour were too narrow for me to fit width wise.; I had to turn to pass between buildings. I know I’m not a twig, but I’m not large either. Main streets are probably the width of a queen bed or so, but most of the smaller paths to actually get to the bulk of the houses are maybe 3 feet wide of mud. These paths aren’t navigable at all- it absolutely blew my mind that people could semi-efficiently get around and know where they were.

The communities are going to hold community meetings this week to introduce us and generate a consensus of what project they’d most like us to work on. We’ll be going back on Monday to talk with them and finalize the details, timeline and expectations for our project. The communities all had different ideas, but it’ll be difficult because in some of the situations we’re powerless. The most pressing from Alliem Park who doesn’t have toilets at all. They literally walk to find an established house and pay to use their bathrooms because they don’t even have pot-o-pots. While so sad, there isn’t really anything we can do to help them on issues like that. We don’t have funding and we’re not the government, so we’re limited in what we can do. I am very excited though to hear the results of the meeting and finally be able to get started.

We weren’t allowed to take photographs today out of respect for the people living there. We didn’t want to come across like they were specimens or tourist attractions when this is their daily life. Adi, our partner from the nonprofit we’re working with is thinking that once we’ve decided on a project we’ll be able to use cameras, but for today it was more about meeting the people. Since words really can’t do it justice, I stole some photos from Google of Khayelitsha. I tried to pick the ones that best emulated my experience there this morning. Hopefully next week I'll be able to go out and take some of my own.