Africa (Commonwealth Union) _ A portrait of Nelson Mandela watches over Maggie Mothemba’s dimly lit room, where she has lived for six years. “He’s like my father,” says the 57-year-old, reflecting on her vote for Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa’s first democratic election in April 1994. Mothemba was then “full of hope” to secure a government-subsidized house, a key ANC promise. Yet, like 2.5 million other households, she still waits.
In 2017, evicted from a private rental, Mothemba moved into a derelict hospital in Woodstock, Cape Town, squatted by those protesting the slow pace of affordable housing development. Despite the government accommodating nearly 5 million households in 30 years, the rate of new housing has drastically slowed over the past decade. As South Africa faces a general election this week, campaigners argue that the country has failed to address the spatial segregation entrenched by apartheid.
“There are millions on the housing waiting list and many more in inadequate housing – it’s a massive issue,” says urban policy researcher Nick Budlender from Ndifuna Ukwazi, a nonprofit supporting the Woodstock hospital occupation, now nicknamed Cissie Gool House after an anti-apartheid activist. At its peak in 1998-99, South Africa built over 235,000 fully subsidized houses annually. In 2022-23, the number was just 34,000, largely due to “budget cuts and the Covid-19 pandemic,” according to the Department of Human Settlements.
Disillusionment runs deep among residents like Mothemba and her neighbors with the ANC and the Democratic Alliance (DA), which governs Cape Town and the Western Cape province. “We are used to these empty promises. Many people have died on the waiting list,” says Faghmeeda Ling, 57, a leader at Cissie Gool House. Ling’s family history is marked by evictions, starting with her mother’s forced removal from District Six during apartheid. In 2017, her landlord sold their building, and the city offered alternative accommodation far from the center.
“What they’re doing with us now is the same as under apartheid, it’s just called by the fancy name – ‘gentrification’,” Ling asserts. Policies have not disrupted “spatial apartheid,” says Budlender. Cape Town’s stark divide sees mainly white residents enjoying inner-city amenities, while the outskirts house tightly packed shacks and informal settlements of predominantly black and colored people. The municipality’s housing needs register lists over 375,000 applicants, yet no affordable housing units have been completed in the inner city since apartheid’s end.
The consequences are profound. A 2022 Harvard study found that South Africa’s lowest-earning workers spend more than 37% of their income on transport. “It is hard to even comprehend the wealth-destroying power of paying half your income on transport,” says Budlender, impacting upward mobility, education, and job opportunities.
Ndifuna Ukwazi advocates for releasing public land to build social housing, identifying 128 sq km of “underutilized” public land across Cape Town. Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis claims that “various municipal-owned properties in central Cape Town” have been released, with “6,500 social housing units in the pipeline.”
Seven years after its initial occupation, Woodstock hospital now houses over 1,000 people. Colorful murals cover its corridors, named after streets from which families were evicted, but the threat of eviction looms. For Budlender, while “the occupation isn’t perfect,” it uniquely provides homes for evictees in well-located areas.
Residents cling to hope. “I want to die knowing my children are in a house of their own,” says Ling: “Not going to bed thinking they might wake up to an eviction letter.”
