Travelling through the townships of Durban, you’ll ask yourself, what happened to the pride of cleaning one’s yard and flower garden? How did we come to co-exist with dirt and rubble inside spaces that once carried dignity and order? The decline is most visible in stands with backyard and stand-alone rental dwellings, where density has increased without planning, care, or restraint.
What was once a domestic space of pride has steadily become an informal market. Where is Sunbeam and the pantyhose to shine the stoep? Where is the everyday ethic of maintenance, responsibility, and pride in one’s immediate environment—the small space to practice pantsula dance and twalatsa moves?
The small flower space to take “same time” camera pictures? These were not aesthetic habits. They were social practices that signalled order, respect, and accountability amidst oppression and disposition.
Read Full Article on The Sowetan
[paywall]
Though households need money, and backyard dwelling provides viable livelihoods, I still struggle to understand why tenants must live in such poor sanitary conditions. Poverty does not require filth. Survival does not demand neglect.
Economic necessity does not automatically justify the collapse of basic standards of living. Across Durban’s townships, unplanned density has been normalised, almost expected. What is more troubling is that the municipality itself violates its own bylaws by approving developments without proper traffic management plans, without adequate bulk infrastructure, and without serious consideration of safety.
Planned density supports proximity and opportunity. Unmanaged density produces congestion, conflict, and violence. Environmental degradation deepens this crisis.
Municipal waste collection has not recovered in many townships and informal settlements. Uncollected garbage accumulates on street corners and open spaces, turning residential environments into informal landfill sites. Rats multiply, drainage systems clog, and health risks mount.
Environmental neglect has become a daily condition rather than an emergency. Later we hear that beaches have been closed for swimming because, as the project management adage goes, problems downstream are a consequence of neglect upstream. These dynamics converge with particular intensity in Inanda.
For over two decades Inanda has been a national crime question, yearly cited yet rarely confronted in its full social complexity. Crime there cannot be reduced to policing alone. Its determinants are spatial, environmental, economic, and institutional.
The proliferation of unlicensed taverns, many operating from residential yards of formal and informal dwellings, has transformed parts of Inanda into sites of persistent violence. These spaces are commonly associated with stabbings, murder, and rape. Alcohol abuse, overcrowding, absence of youth recreation and development opportunities, unemployment, and weak regulation intersect, producing violence that appears routine rather than exceptional.
Unplanned density has erased the boundary between residential life and commercial exploitation. Every meter of land becomes a potential rental unit and even an illegal trading zone. Yards are repeatedly subdivided, rooms are erected without services or access routes, and tenants are crowded into unsafe conditions, even on riverbanks, with dire consequences when the flash flood arrives.
Economic migrants from rural provinces pay high rents to live close to work, while landlords extract value with little reinvestment into infrastructure or safety. What is often framed as survival increasingly resembles greed.
[/paywall]
