‘Segregation’: Multimillion-dollar crime wall causes uproar in S Africa

As Cape Town plans security measures along N2 highway, shack dwellers say the project will separate the poor from rich.

Cape Town, South Africa – Thandi Jolingana, 46, beams with pride as she shows off the bathroom she built in her corrugated iron shack, after her husband went out to relieve himself at the communal toilet one night and was robbed at gunpoint.

Jolingana lives in a shantytown known as Taiwan, on the edge of Cape Town’s Khayelitsha township – a place where a private toilet is a luxury.

“I’m a rich girl,” she jokes, pointing out that she could be living more comfortably, were it not for the several unemployed relatives she has to support financially, in addition to her two children.

Jolingana works as a nurse’s assistant. With her public servant’s salary, she is one of the few in the informal settlement who can afford indoor plumbing. Meanwhile, her neighbours make use of a row of outdoor toilets that city authorities supply at the rate of about one cubicle per every 10 households. For Jolingana, the public facilities are a constant reminder of the municipality’s broken promises.

The lack of services in the settlement has again come under the spotlight after Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis announced controversial plans to build a wall to keep criminals at bay along the N2 highway, which abuts a series of townships, along with Cape Town International Airport.