TY - JOUR
T1 - A politics of land occupation: a perspective on state practice and everyday mobilisation in Zille Raine Heights, Cape Town
AU - Thorn, Jessica Paula Rose
AU - Oldfield, Sophie
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
U2 - 10.1177/0021909611403710
DO - 10.1177/0021909611403710
M3 - Article
SN - 1745-2538
VL - 46
JO - Journal of Asian and African Studies
JF - Journal of Asian and African Studies
IS - 5
ER -