Though apartheid in South Africa ended 30 years ago, Cape Town's wealth segregation is proof of its damaging legacy. While tourists and the wealthy love the city, young locals struggle with high rents, making living in the city increasingly unaffordable.
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00:00It's been a struggle for Capetonians for many years now, the fight for affordable housing
00:05and an affordable life in inner-city Cape Town.
00:08For Gabriel Klaassen, who's come from the outskirts of the city, it's a problem built
00:12on a historical divide of race and class.
00:15In South Africa, in Cape Town specifically, we can see a very clear marking of segregation,
00:20even 30 years after democracy, where black and coloured people are still living in the
00:25periphery of the city.
00:27In a city that saw 2.8 million tourists arriving at its airport in one year alone, and which
00:33attracts foreign companies and digital nomads, social justice groups say Cape Town is failing
00:39to provide for its own.
00:41In the CBD, we've got a lot of gentrification in terms of fancy coffee shops, Airbnbs, but
00:48then we've also got your businesses, your informal traders, and your government buildings
00:53and some more up the hill on the basis you've got historically white areas where the rent
00:58is even too expensive for white people to afford at this stage.
01:02To get a glimpse of the outskirts, we pick up Gabriel in his home area of the Cape Flats,
01:07around 20km from the city centre.
01:09The Cape Flats have become infamous for their high crime rate and lack of opportunities.
01:15Formed in the 1950s, they were a result of an apartheid-era law, the Group Areas Act,
01:21which forced people of colour out of mixed-city neighbourhoods to racially segregated areas.
01:27Back in the city, District 6, a place where Gabriel believes his great-grandfather might
01:32have lived or worked, is one of the main inner-city sites of forced removal.
01:39This is the CBD, it's the Central Business District.
01:42It is where opportunities are, social and economic opportunities are, and coloured black
01:48people, people of colour were moved from this space forcibly to right over there, left
01:57with zero water, sanitation options, not decent housing, and so people's entire livelihoods
02:05were uprooted in one night.
02:07Unlike Gabriel, activist and filmmaker Jordan Peters has managed to stay in the city.
02:14Salt River, where she lives, is an old industrial neighbourhood and on the city's list for upgrading.
02:20This is a city that is so integral to who I am as a person, and people see it as a tourist
02:27destination, and so I think the politicisation comes in when you realise actually this doesn't
02:33make sense.
02:34The small-surplus Radical Bookstore, in a neighbouring suburb, is one of the few places
02:39Jordan feels she and other activists can meet, organise and freely exchange views.
02:45And while young Capetonians like Jordan and Gabriel are trying to make sense of it all,
02:50they, together with other locals, continue to push for inclusion in a city that they
02:55call home.