Life in the Liberated Zone

David Lurie

Katz/SABA

Up until Easter 1986, black Africans without government passes were required to live in the tribal homelands. There were between nine and twelve million of them, desperate for food and work, kept at bay only by the pass laws. Police destroyed squatter camps whenever they appeared and repatriated the inhabitants to the homelands but eventually they became too numerous and the government gave up. Five years ago, the bleak salt flats outside Cape Town were empty and desolate, nothing but sand dunes, scrub and thousands of corrugated iron toilets. Now it's a city of sorts, shacks and shanties densely populated by bootleggers, Cape Rastas, daggarokers(dope smokers), witch doctors, thugs and revolutionaries as well as a million ordinary people for whom life was very tough. Overlooking Kayelisha in the early morning. The name means 'New Home'.

David Lurie, "Life in the Liberated Zone," in POYi Archive, Item #20228, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/20228 (accessed April 21, 2025).