The Group Areas Act of 1950 was used to justify the ethnic cleansing that followed. Architects bolstered and perpetuated apartheid, by designing buildings that upheld these divisions.Īll went to plan until the postwar economic boom of the 1950s, when large concentrations of squatter camps began to populate cities, due to increased urban labor demand and the resultant rural-urban migration.

Urban planners selected the most attractive urban areas for the development of an exclusively White property market, and reserved infertile rural areas, far from city centers, for Black communities. 1 Patricia Johnson-Castle et al., “ The Group Areas of Act of 1950,” South African History Online (2014).

The government elected in 1948 adopted the policy of apartheid so as to establish and maintain separate spaces for different racial groups. To understand Mafevuka’s story, it’s necessary to trace South Africa’s complex history all the way back to the introduction of Architecture with a capital “A.” In South Africa, architectural practice has its roots in slavery (1652-1834) and apartheid (1948-1994), which institutionalized and spatially formalized racism through land acts and building regulations.

To understand the threats to women and girls in informal settlements, it’s necessary to trace South Africa’s history back to the introduction of Architecture with a capital ‘A.’ Days later, the 20-year-old’s body was found in a filthy toilet cubicle. Her home was in SST, one of Khayelitsha’s informal settlements, and like most homes in SST, it was not equipped with plumbing or running water. Mafevuka lived in Khayelitsha, near Cape Town. On Maat 8 pm, Sinoxolo Mafevuka left her corrugated sheet-iron home, toilet paper in hand, to relieve herself at the nearest public toilet. Patricia Mhoja Bandora December 2021 A young girl uses a public toilet in the Khayelitsha informal settlement, 2014.

57 pees township