ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on narrative interviews conducted with residents in Khayalitsha, an informal settlement outside the medium sized city of Bloemfontein. It explores the spatial attachments of one group of informal settlement dwellers who are quietly fighting for a sense of inclusion into the wider urban fabric of the city. The government's stance on informal settlements has relaxed somewhat since the early post-apartheid period, when eradication was a common practice. The chapter aims to build on the ethnographic research by focusing specifically on how individual informal settlement dwellers cultivate relationships to space and place, and how citizenship may be understood as a daily negotiated spatial practice in some of South Africa's informal areas. The Khayalitsha settlement was started seven years ago, after permission was obtained from the landowners for people to squat on the territory. At present, the residents of Khayalitsha share an identity of residential marginalization and overall deprivation.
