In order for these residents to venture into other parts of Cape Town that were designated as “white-only” spaces, they had to carry special documentation to identify themselves. The Group Areas Act adopted in 1950 established these different areas of the city as places for different races to occupy. These areas were often located so far outside the city that black people were forced to commute long distances to get to work. This led to the creation of illegal/informal settlements such as the Crossroads neighborhood. Crossroads was created when workers were forcefully removed from Brown’s Farm and relocated to a barren piece of land. When they arrived, there was no infrastructure set up and they had to develop housing from the scraps they could find (Wainwright, 2014). In 1975, the population of Crossroads was forcefully evicted again and moved to Khayelitsha (“Crossroads Township”, n.d.). In recent years, Khayelitsha has grown into a city with a vibrant economy. 75% of the population still live in shanty homes and the remaining percentage live in government-built homes. The most common forms of employment in the area are domestic workers, services work, skilled manual labor, unskilled manual labor, and security (“About Khayelitsha”, n.d.). Although the living conditions in this township are unideal and at times unsafe, the community has still found a way to “incrementally [transform] its neighborhoods and settlements… into vibrant spaces with a unique mix of spaza shops, hairdressers, carpenters, welders, and other informal traders and service providers” (Cole, 2013). The creativity that comes with the need to improvise is of great importance to the central ideas being explored in this thesis.
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Khayelitsha, South Africa
