In January, Metrorail explained to a number of journalists how the new blue “people’s train” operating on the southern line from Cape Town to Simon’s Town works, and showed them the construction efforts under way to get the Central Line (Cape Town to Langa) up and running as well.  

The blue train has since been suspended due to a coach being torched. On the Central Line, the journalists were shown, one of the tricky issues that needs to be resolved before the people’s train can function there, is the informal dwellings built on the tracks that have become home to many people over the past few years. 

The Philippi station, connecting trains from Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain to Cape Town Station, was one of the stations viewed by the media group. It has been closed since 2019 due to vandalism and theft. When the Central Line was closed, informal housing structures were positioned on the tracks in and around the station. Over the past two years these have grown in number and size.

It is not the only station where the tracks have been appropriated for informal dwellings – at the Langa and Nonkqubela stations occupation began around 2016.

The appropriation of this land shows again the initiative people take outside of formal opportunities when dealing with a government that is not responsive to their immediate lived circumstances. Legally, a person who has been occupying a piece of land cannot be evicted without the steps mandated by the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act [No 19 of 1998]. Section 4 of the act details the steps required before the process of eviction can begin. After considering all relevant circumstances, a court may only grant an order for eviction if it is of the opinion that it is just and equitable to do so. It is not uncommon for a court to decline to grant such an order, as was seen in August 2020 when the Western Cape High Court declared the City of Cape Town’s lockdown evictions illegal.

It is easy to problematise the residents of informal settlements for occupying land. In fact, one may even be forgiven for harbouring a negative view of them, given that the occupation is visible, while the factors driving the occupation of land are hidden from public view. The continued lack of access to decent housing through formalised means and the job losses tied to the Covid-19 pandemic have seen the number of informal settlements and homeless people increase in South Africa widely, particularly in the City of Cape Town. In 2019 there were 4,862 homeless people in Cape Town, according to figures from the Western Cape government. Yet, in 2021, a study on the cost of homelessness revealed that there were roughly 14,000 people sleeping on the city’s streets. This is an increase of more than 9,000 in two years. While there are no official statistics available on the increase in the number of informal settlements, according to anecdotal reports these settlements have also increased, with land occupations becoming common throughout the city. 

Employment prospects have not changed either. A World Bank report on the impact of Covid-19 on South Africa’s labour market shows that the number of employed people decreased by nearly 1.5 million, and the wages of workers who still had jobs dropped by 10% to 15% from the first lockdown in March 2020 to July 2021.

At the same time, the state has been slow to respond to the ever-growing need for housing. Rather than trying to find lasting, sustainable solutions to the housing crisis in conjunction with citizens, it has chosen to criminalise their efforts.

There have been a number of articles documenting how poorly the City of Cape Town treats homeless people and residents of informal settlements. A 400-page report by The Inkathalo Conversations (TIC) revealed the extent of this ill-treatment and gave a number of recommendations that the City could implement. Chief among these was that the City should review and amend all by-laws that criminalise homelessness without just cause. A subsequent article by GroundUp reported that, almost a year later, the City had failed to implement these recommendations.

In a much-publicised incident in 2020, the South African Human Rights Commission took the City of Cape Town to court for the controversial eviction of Bulelani Qolani from his shack. The City lost at both the High Court and Supreme Court of Appeal. One would hope these losses would make the City rethink its stance on providing quality housing and protecting the rights of homeless people. Instead, it has continued to criminalise the efforts of citizens, as seen in the unlawful eviction of nine Delft families in January 2022.

As mandated by the Constitution, the government has an inherent responsibility to provide essential services necessary to the survival and functioning of its citizens, including decent housing and affordable transport, quality education, adequate health and security. The essential nature of these services means that whenever the government drops the ball, communities are left with no option but to take matters into their own hands – as happened at the Philippi and other occupied train stations.

Ironically,  the very people who have built their homes on the tracks also experience transport problems. Residents in the Philippi area, on and off the tracks, have to contend with ever-increasing taxi costs, a MyCiTi bus service that doesn’t dare operate in their area, e-hailing services that have been effectively banned by taxi associations, and taxi wars that put their lives at risk. The train used to provide a cheap, relatively safe mode of transport for them. Yet, when it failed to operate, they didn’t think twice about sacrificing it. Their housing needs were more pressing than the hope that they would one day have an operating rail system. When both the transport and housing systems in an area fail, we see that residents may be forced to sacrifice one for the other. 

While it is difficult to praise the Philippi residents for taking charge of a problem in a way that is useful to them but problematic in the larger scheme of things, it is equally difficult to overlook the government’s failure to create an enabling environment for spatial planning practices that are driven by the citizens themselves.

Gone are the days where an authoritarian government was needed to drive the developmental agenda. Times have changed. In the present day there should be space for communities to claim their voice in their own development and to be part of decision-making on how it ought to happen. Integrated Development Plan roadshows alone are not enough to facilitate this process.

We need the government to respond to people’s needs in a manner that places them at the centre. We need the government to promote a town planning system that is agile, responsive and innovative, not one that criminalises the efforts of its citizens to buffer the impacts of poverty. We need a government that pioneers governance systems where citizens’ efforts to claim land and housing are accommodated within formalised channels that do not go against government imperatives for development planning. This starts with a well-functioning government system, one that does not put its citizens in a position where they are forced to choose between their public transport needs and the urgent need for a roof over their heads. DM

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