ABSTRACT
The 1983 official announcement that a new town, Khayelitsha, was to be created for African residents of Cape Town came as a surprise. Since 1955 only a limited number of Africans had legal right to remain in the Western Cape and from 1966 a deliberate policy of exclusion and harassment of Cape Town residents was implemented. Whether Khayelitsha heralded a real change in policy or was a pragmatic response to gross overcrowding, unsuccessful removals and escalating violence is not clear (Cook 1986). At first it was planned that all African residents in Cape Town, starting with those in the squatter settlement of Crossroads (Fig. 10.1), would live there, but without any rights to land. With this in mind a 3,220-hectare site was cleared and building started on the first of four towns each to comprise four villages housing 30,000 people in 25–32–square-metre core houses on 160-square-metre plots. Included was space for higher-income private housing, land for educational and social services (but none for industry), a central area, a spinal green heartland and ultimately a rail link to Cape Town.
