Reclaiming the spatial imaginary: a photovoice study of resistance to displacement in Woodstock, Cape Town

Present-day South Africa is still characterised by colonial- and apartheid-era patterns of urban displacement that are exacerbated by gentrification. Low-income tenants’ and evictees’ experiences of displacement and its resistance have social, spatial, psychological, and political components. Examining these components can contribute to understanding the processes and impacts of gentrification. Reclaim the City (RTC) is a young grassroots campaign that resists evictions and demands well-located affordable housing in Cape Town through protest, education, and occupation. This study investigated how RTC activists experience and resist their displacement from the gentrifying suburb of Woodstock in Cape Town. Using a critical psychological framework, data from photovoice, participant observation, and key informant interviews were collected in 2018, triangulated, and analysed using thematic analysis. This study found that participants’ experiences of displacement were characterised by being “thingified” as black low-income tenants through mistreatment by landlords, displacement from centres to peripheries, becoming invisible residents, and internalisation. This was compounded for those with intersectional vulnerabilities, such as women and African migrants. Such experiences uphold rather than contradict an apartheid spatial imaginary, encompassing the continuation of apartheid-era norms relating to psychological, spatial, and social elements of displacement into the present. While sometimes delegitimised for their illegal activities, this study illustrates how RTC activists combined strategies of building new identities, organising legal and illegal resistance to displacement, and making meaning of their occupation of a vacant building in Woodstock, to pave the way for new spatial imaginaries. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Grantor

Department of Psychology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Urson, Ruth

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Kessi, Shose
• Daya, Shari

• Psychological Research

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/30836

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/30836