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Upon arriving in Cape Town, I was shocked to learn that in this country, as in Brazil, people are crying out for the president’s impeachment. Jacob Zuma, leader of the African National Congress (ANC), has been President of South Africa since 2009. While he has faced a number of corruption scandals over the years, his political career may have just hit an all-time low: the high court recently ruled that he had violated the Constitution in his handling of a case accusing him of using millions of tax dollars to renovate his private home. This led the opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, to begin impeachment proceedings against him. However, the ANC defeated their effort by claiming that Zuma had acted illegally because he had received poor legal advice. The leader of the Democratic Alliance said: “Today it will be recorded that A.N.C. members of this Parliament chose to defend a crooked, broken president instead of the Constitution and the rule of law. Today will signal once and for all that the A.N.C. has lost its way, and that there is no way back.”

This introduction to South African politics definitely left an impression! But of course, it is important to rewind. I will focus on the lessons I learned regarding Cape Town’s spatial segregation, because I have always been interested in the ways in which the legacy of apartheid has shaped the city’s urban landscape. When apartheid was established in 1948, the government sought to separate people along color lines. Thus, neighborhoods were designated for whites, coloreds (mixed race people) and blacks. The darker people were, the further they were pushed outside of the city. In post-apartheid South Africa, urban planning has failed to undo what was established before democracy. Why? For one, the re-organization of the government led to administrative and legislative turmoil. New national policies were eventually written for every sector, except planning, which came years later. This meant that planners were in limbo until new urban planning policies were decided. Additionally, housing policies under the new democratic government have largely failed to support the implementation of mixed-use housing, which would allow for integration. In other cases, they have reinforced apartheid era segregation. For example, while Mandela’s Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) has led to the construction of 3.6 million new homes for the poor across the country, the majority of these have been built at the edges of the cities. This has forced South Africa’s most vulnerable members of society to remain in the undesirable corners of the urban landscape, far from the center, where opportunities lie.

Thus, during my first week in Cape Town I became painfully aware of the city’s spatial segregation. I visited neighborhoods in the Southern Suburbs that are nearly entirely white. I lived in Bo Kaap, a neighborhood that is largely Malay, or populated by descendants of South Asian Muslims. It was declared an exclusive area for Cape Town Muslims during the apartheid regime. I also learned that “townships,” or areas designated for black, colored and Indian people, remain disadvantaged to this day because of their location on the periphery (which limits their access to transportation and causes them to have longer commutes to work in the city center, for example), lack of quality infrastructure and ongoing issues with gang violence and crime.

As Alex and I complete the final leg of our program, we are interested to continue observing the spatial segregation patterns we see in the city as well as compare those that we see in our homestay neighborhoods, Bo Kaap and Langa, a black township.