AFRICA IS A COUNTRY

housing

Friday, November 22nd, 2013

That New York Times column about Cape Town

Let me be clear, because some responses suggest I was not in my recent column for the International New York Times: from just about every assessment, the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape are consistently rated among the top performing South African metros and provinces respectively in terms of governance and levels of service delivery....

Thursday, March 22nd, 2012

This is democracy

In Durban, South Africa, “shackdwellers are taking their municipality to court. The government evicted poor residents from their homes … … and threw them into transit camps, where...

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

Animal Farm

In Cape Town this January, Ken Salo invited Jessica and I to presentations by summer abroad students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They were presenting their findings on urban inequalities in the city. A group...

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

The Red Ants

South African photographers, Moshe Sekete and Kabelo Mofokeng, capture the private security guards–given their name for the red overalls and helmets they wear–who have become notorious for how they evict poor residents in Johannesburg’s inner city from...