A Politics of Land Occupation: State Practice and Everyday Mobilization in Zille Raine Heights, Cape Town

In this paper we reflect on a contested land occupation in Cape Town, the informal settlement of Zille Raine Heights in the city’s southern suburbs, to explore the settlement’s struggle to gain a legal right to land and the state’s attempts to remove it. In occupying land and defending their right t...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of Asian and African studies (Leiden) Vol. 46; no. 5; pp. 518 - 530
Main Authors Thorn, Jessica, Oldfield, Sophie
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.10.2011
Sage Publications Ltd. (UK)
Subjects
Basic rights
Body Height
Cape Town, South Africa
Cities
Government regulation
Informal groups
Land
Land claims
Land rights
Land settlement
Land tenure
Laws, regulations and rules
Legal System
Mobilization
Political mobilization
Politics
State capacity
Suburban areas
Suburbs
Urban politics
Western Cape
South Africa
state practice
Eviction
land occupation
mobilization
legal struggle
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:In this paper we reflect on a contested land occupation in Cape Town, the informal settlement of Zille Raine Heights in the city’s southern suburbs, to explore the settlement’s struggle to gain a legal right to land and the state’s attempts to remove it. In occupying land and defending their right to a decent place in the city, Zille Raine Heights and other settlements like it challenge the state in precise ways. This paper explores the provisional and unstable ways in which land occupiers and the state access and defend resources such as land, and in the process, engage in a politics of occupation together.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ObjectType-Article-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
ISSN:0021-9096
1745-2538
DOI:10.1177/0021909611403710