Tom Slater and Joe Schaffers

Municipal Housing and Community in Cape Town: lessons from the Bloemhof Flats

In this LiPS talk we explore how experiences and memories of a Cape Town municipal housing project sustained people who were forcibly displaced from that project under apartheid in South Africa. Archival study of The Bloemhof Flats in Cape Town’s District Six, and group interviews with former residents, inform an exploration of the relationships between municipal housing and community formation, and its impact on people’s lives, both under apartheid and in its wake of material hardships. Given the acute current shortage of adequate and affordable housing across Cape Town, studying historical examples of communities embedded in municipal housing is essential to inform current spatial planning. We focus on the capacity for municipal housing to facilitate community formation and to thereby nurture cooperative efforts to improve the quality of life for all. Against the political motivations that underpin the ongoing stigmatization of municipal housing, there is an important historical record to analyze: one of community, home, and hope. A detailed examination of The Bloemhof Flats and the community to which the project gave rise inform our central argument: there is tremendous capacity in municipal housing to improve people’s lives. By threading together the archival information with the first-hand accounts of former residents, we trace how a relatively strong community formed in a short space of time, and how memories of that community have sustained people even when its material dimension was taken from them.

Tom Slater, Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University, is an urban geographer and works in the style of institutional political economy on a range of urban issues, particularly gentrification and displacement, territorial stigmatization, critical urban theory, and housing justice movements. He is the author of 6 books and over 75 scholarly articles, and over the last decade, he has delivered keynote and public lectures in 20 different countries. His work has been translated into 9 different languages, and he has held Professorial Fellowships at the University of Trento, Italy; the University of Cape Town, South Africa; and the University of Chile-Santiago. He sits on numerous editorial boards and is a former Editor of the Journal of Urban Affairs and The Sociological Review.

Dr. Joe Schaffers, Senior Education Officer, District Six Museum, Cape Town, was born in 1939 in the vibrant neighborhood of District Six, Cape Town. In 1966, under the apartheid Group Areas Act, District Six was proclaimed an area for ‘White Occupation Only.’ Joe, his family, and over 60,000 other residents of color were forced out of their homes, which were then razed to the ground. Residents were scattered into cheaply built housing in different ‘colored townships’ miles away from District Six, and miles away from each other. A graduate of Livingstone High School in Claremont, Joe felt a calling and a duty to serve his displaced community. He worked as a Health Inspector for the City of Cape Town municipality for 34 years, covering every area where displaced people were forced to go, improving standards of living, and helping people deal with the psychological trauma of forced eviction. He was awarded several commendations for his work, and received the Chairperson’s Award for Service Excellence in 1993. In 1998, Joe began working at the District Six Museum, sharing accounts of forced evictions and their psychological, economic and social consequences. He has educated hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Museum about apartheid human rights violations, and the dangers of racial domination and stigmatization. In 2022 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Edinburgh for his lifelong dedication to preserving the memory of District Six.