The Woodstock Hub claims that Beukes and the other Bromwell Street tenants are being evicted for failure to pay rent. But while tenants concede that they have not been paying rent for the past two years, they say that they have been unable to establish any contact with the new owners since they took over the property. Residents believe that this has been part of a deliberate move to facilitate their eviction and avoid dealing with long-standing lease agreements. [...]
He points out that much of this former industrial area escaped the large-scale segregation of the apartheid state's Group Areas Act, which ripped apart other similarly diverse Cape Town communities, most famously District 6.
The Act saw most Capetonians of colour cast out into the collection of marginalised townships now known as the Cape Flats and sometimes still referred to as the "apartheid's dumping ground". [...]
Twenty-two years since the end of apartheid, this situation is being mirrored across Cape Town, with free market forces, favourable tax breaks and rocketing property prices entrenching Cape Town's undesirable status as one of the most segregated cities in South Africa.
But a new campaign dubbed Reclaim the City aims to finally wrest Cape Town's soul from apartheid's enduring legacies and what activists see as its contemporary manifestation. Marching under the banner of "Land for people, not for profit", the campaign is fighting to reimagine the city as a more racially and economically integrated and equal space.
No comments:
Post a Comment