Our new home – Khayelitsha (2013)
Series total: 85 images
I first approached Khayelitsha township from Stellenbosch down Baden Powell Drive to the Cape Flats, turning right after Govan Mbeki Street onto Walter Sisulu Road. The names speak much of South Africa’s modern history; as does the physicality of the township itself.
Khayelitsha (which translates as ‘our new home’ in the Xhosa language) was founded and named (apparently without irony) in 1983 as one of the Apartheid regimes last efforts to enforce the 1950 Group Areas Act that designated separate residential areas along racial lines. It is one of the fastest growing townships in South Africa, home to half a million people, most living in informal structures that are known locally as shacks.
