ABSTRACT
When a tornado swept through Manenberg, a working-class, coloured commun-
ity on the Cape Flats in 1999, a senior city official told reporters that this was a
Godsend; it was divine intervention. Manenberg had for many years been the
nerve centre of Cape Town’s gang and drug underworld, and the destruction of
a number of three-storey flats in Manenberg was seen as an opportunity to raze
these buildings and rebuild the area from ground zero. It was widely believed
that Manenberg’s rental flats had become gang strongholds, and by building
freestanding, low-income houses and introducing individual home ownership, it
would be possible to rebuild Manenberg as a virtuous community of responsible
property owners. Not only would this undermine de facto gang control over
access to a significant section of the City of Cape Town’s (CCT) rental stock, but
the ‘rent-to-buy’ housing scheme would reduce residents’ dependency on a
paternalistic local state. However, the scheme encountered violent resistance
from former backyard shack-dwellers and unemployed residents who were
excluded from participating in this housing programme. In addition, many back-
yarders were violently opposed to the fact that outsiders from various parts of
Cape Town qualified for homes as part of the programme. Following the
destruction of property at the construction site, the CCT successfully sought a
court interdict preventing a group of community activists from approaching the
building site.
