Category Archives: Isipingo

Here to work: the socioeconomic characteristics of informal dwellers in post-apartheid South Africa

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Here to work: the socioeconomic characteristics of informal dwellers in post-apartheid South Africa

by Mark Hunter & Dorrit Posel

Government policy towards informal settlements in South Africa reflects a tension between two approaches: recognizing the legitimacy of informal settlements and aggressively removing these so-called “slums”. Drawing on nationally representative household survey data and interviews with 25 individuals relocated from an informal settlement to a “transit camp”, this paper argues that more detailed attention should be paid to the changing connection between housing, household formation and work. Whereas cities in the apartheid era were marked by relatively stable industrial labour and racially segregated family housing, today the location and nature of informal dwellings are consistent with two important trends: demographic shifts, including towards smaller more numerous households, and employment shifts, including a move from permanent to casual and from formal to informal work. This study is therefore able to substantiate in more detail a longstanding insistence by informal settlement residents that they live where they do for reasons vital to their everyday survival. The paper also highlights the limitations of relocations not only to urban peripheries but also to other parts of cities, and it underscoresthe importance of upgrading informal
settlements through in situ development.

The Difference that Place Makes: The Economic Implications of Moving from an Informal Settlement to a Transit Camp

The Difference that Place Makes: Some Brief Notes on the Economic Implications of Moving from an Informal Settlement to a Transit Camp

Mark Hunter, Dept. Geography, University of Toronto, mhunter@utsc.utoronto.ca. August, 2010.

This document is a very brief case study exploring the economic implications of a small informal settlement’s relocation from King’s Rest, a place close to a railway station, dock, a relatively wealthy suburb at Durban’s Bluff, to a large transit camp near Orient Hills in Isipingo.

On the face of it the move should not have adversely affected the community: Isipingo is an industrial area of Durban and not a rural peripheral location—the site of many new RDP housing settlements. Moreover, on paper, the transit camp offers a healthier environment: communal toilets and water are provided and the housing structures are formally built.

However, with striking unanimity community members tell how their economic livelihoods have been undermined by this move; how their sense of autonomy has been disrupted; and how housing, sanitation, and water provisions–despite being “formal”–are, on the whole, worse.

Click here to read this document in pdf.