Planning Theory & Practice

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Conflicts Between and Within: The ‘Conflicting

Rationalities’ of Informal Occupation in South
Africa

Nobukhosi Ngwenya & Liza Rose Cirolia

To cite this article: Nobukhosi Ngwenya & Liza Rose Cirolia (2020): Conflicts Between and Within:
The ‘Conflicting Rationalities’ of Informal Occupation in South Africa, Planning Theory & Practice,
DOI: 10.1080/14649357.2020.1808237

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2020.1808237

Published online: 18 Aug 2020.

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PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE
https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2020.1808237

Conflicts Between and Within: The ‘Conflicting Rationalities’ of

Informal Occupation in South Africa
Nobukhosi Ngwenya and Liza Rose Cirolia
African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

One of the most pervasive planning challenges in Southern cities is the formal Received 13 January 2020
housing shortage. In South African cities informal occupation of vacant build­ Accepted 29 July 2020
ings and land is one way in which urban dwellers meet their housing needs. KEYWORDS
This paper uses land occupations in Cape Town, South Africa, as a lens to Conflicting rationalities;
explore conflicting rationalities. We show that there are conflicting rationalities housing; informal
both between the state and occupiers, as well as within the state and among occupation; informal
occupiers. In nuancing the conflicting rationalities concept through an empiri­ settlements
cal case study, this paper concludes by outlining implications for planning
theory and practice.

Introduction
Formal housing shortages are pervasive in cities across the world. In South African cities, housing
shortages have led to the formation of informal settlements and practices such as ‘backyarding’ and
overcrowding. These processes reflect the lasting legacy of apartheid spatial planning and the
contemporary challenges related to urban growth and inequality. Informal occupations of land and
buildings by people and communities are a common response to the formal housing shortage in
South African cities. Occupations are a key site of tension between communities and the state, as
they contravene the state’s land use and planning regulations (Huchzermeyer, 2004). In this paper
we use occupations as a lens to explore the conflicting rationalities of actors involved in addressing
the housing challenges in South African cities. The two key actor groups are the state and
communities.
The concept of conflicting rationalities, developed by Southern planning scholars such as
Vanessa Watson, provides insights into the seemingly irreconcilable world views of different actors
involved in complex development processes. Much of the planning scholarship has framed com­
munities and the state as competing groups with different interests and intents (Watson, 2003). Our
paper supports and extends this argument. We argue that there are conflicts between and within
these groups. In our research, we found that conflicts within communities are driven by disagree­
ments about the nature of the housing demands and the role that the state should play in housing
development. Conflicts within the state are driven by differing rationalities between the levels of
government, the departments within local government, and the technical and political arms of the
state.

CONTACT Nobukhosi Ngwenya nobukhosingwenya@gmail.com African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, Cape
Town, South Africa
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 N. NGWENYA AND L. R. CIROLIA

In examining these conflicts, we nuance the concept of conflicting rationalities and deconstruct
the binary between state and community rationalities. With respect to planning theory, we highlight
the inherent nature of conflict both within and between groups, and the challenges posed by
conflicting rationalities to the attainment of the conditions that communicative/collaborative plan­
ning theorists argue are necessary for the development of consensus. Subsequently, and in relation
to planning practice, we show that planners operate in a complex interface between power and
powerlessness. This unique position affords planners the opportunity to engage with actor groups
in a manner that highlights possibilities for fostering alliances and synergies; this can lead to an
acknowledgement of the legitimacy of occupations and their incorporation into strategies aimed at
the production of an inclusive city.
Including this introduction, this paper is structured in six sections. The following two sections
provide an overview of the methods used and the key bodies of literature within which our
contribution sits. Subsequent sections provide the empirical basis for our argument. First, we
focus on the conflicting rationalities between occupiers and the state. Following this, we unpack
conflicts that exist within a group of occupiers and within the state, respectively. In the conclusion,
we articulate the key insights we have arrived at and their implications for planning theory and
practice.

Research Methods and Techniques

The methods reflect a synthesis of research conducted on housing and occupations in the City of
Cape Town over the past four years. The research used a mixed methods approach to unearth and
distil the key logics driving the actions of the state and occupiers.
To understand the state perspective, we conducted semi-structured formal and informal indivi­
dual interviews with officials across the three spheres of South African government: City of Cape
Town (local government), Western Cape Provincial Government (regional government) and national
government. The interviews were structured as “conversations”, roughly an hour in length and
mostly conducted in the officials’ offices (Babbie & Mouton, 2001, p. 289). The responses reflect the
participants’ thoughts, beliefs and knowledge of the phenomenon. As the City has undergone
several rounds of restructuring over the past four years, the names of the directorates and titles of
individuals involved in land, planning, and housing are in constant flux. We interviewed officials
involved in housing delivery, informal settlement upgrading, land development, and economic
development. In the Western Cape Provincial Government, we interviewed officials working in the
Department of Public Works, Department of Human Settlements and the Directorate of Spatial
Planning. In the national government, we interviewed officials in the Department of Human
Settlements’ National Upgrading Support Programme and the National Treasury’s Cities Support
Programme. In addition to individual interviews, we reviewed and analysed a range of public
documentation including city spatial development frameworks, provincial plans and budgets,
National Human Settlements Department budget vote speeches and housing policy circulars,
transcripts of debates in the Human Settlements Portfolio Committee meetings, minutes of muni­
cipal council meetings, and newspaper articles which quote identified officials. Finally, the research
included attending internal and public meetings, workshops, and dialogues hosted by the various
levels of government and state agencies. While the official research period lasted from 2016 to 2019,
the researchers have a long history of working on housing, land, and informal settlements in the City
of Cape Town and the Western Cape Province, and this lengthy hands-on work helped to inform the
selection of research participants.
 PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE 3

To understand the community perspective, four sub-cases of informal occupation were selected
across Cape Town – Helen Bowden Nurses Home (Green Point), Woodstock Hospital (Woodstock),
Graceland (Khayelitsha), and Silvertown (Khayelitsha). The occupations in Green Point and
Woodstock are building occupations and the occupations in Khayelitsha – Silvertown and
Graceland – are land occupations. The former are occupied by Reclaim the City, which is
a movement of tenants and workers that is supported by Ndifuna Ukwazi (NU), a non-
government organisation that provides legal and research services. The latter are occupations led
by mobilised communities, who have received varying levels of support from political organisations
such as the Ses’khona People’s Rights Movement and Black First, Land First (BFLF). The occupations
began in the first half of 2017 and, with the exception of the Graceland occupation, are still under
way. These four sub-cases were selected because the researchers have been tracking them since
their inception. For each of the sites, the research included attending bi-weekly internal and public
meetings, internal strategic planning meetings, and marches or protests. Twelve individual and five
focus group interviews were conducted with occupiers and with activists involved in various
occupations in the period between April 2017 and November 2019. The focus groups comprised
between 4–8 people and group interviews lasted on average for 1.5 hours. The groups were
composed of both men and women, but often men outnumbered the women in each group.
Both the individual interviews and the focus group meetings were conducted in the homes of
occupiers on the occupation sites. The interviews were audio-recorded and field notes were taken.
The focus groups and individual interviews have been complemented with ongoing personal
communication with actors within the occupation sites during the same period.
Interview audio data were transcribed and analysed thematically to identify themes in relation to
state and community practices in the housing sector. The data analysis process entailed under­
standing how identified practices complement or contradict each other, in order to identify alter­
native possibilities, actions, and outcomes.

Conflicting Rationalities: A Review of the Literature

The conflicting rationalities concept was developed by Watson (2003) in response to urban planning
theories produced in the global North that foregrounded the development of consensus through
communication among stakeholders (Forester, 2006; Harrison, 2006). Communicative/collaborative
planning theory posits that urban planning is above all a collaborative activity (Forester, 2006;
Healey, 2002). Communicative planning is based on Habermas’s notion of communicative action,
which refers to “attempts by actors to cooperatively define the context of their interaction in such
a way as to enable them to pursue their individual plans. It is the paradigmatic form of social action
oriented toward reaching understanding” (Johnson, 1991, pp. 183–4). It often includes facilitated
dialogue, which aims to achieve and sustain consensus on the basis of a shared understanding of
the goals and their merits. For communicative/collaborative theorists, sincere, truthful and compre­
hensible communication is integral to the urban planning process (Wagner & Zipprian, 1989).
Southern planning scholarship critiques the communicative emphasis in planning theory and
practice. While reaching consensus is a useful goal and aspiration, communicative/collaborative
theory does not take into consideration the “stubborn realities” of global South cities (Watson,
2013). In the context of many development projects, we encounter fundamental differences
between how states and communities see and understand development processes (De Satgé &
Watson, 2018). The deep differences and divergences between the everyday lived experiences of
communities and governments’ visions and plans “do not easily lend themselves to resolution or
4 N. NGWENYA AND L. R. CIROLIA

generalised solutions. In some situations, we find ourselves dealing with seemingly irreconcilable
gaps . . . where world-views and the very meaning of development or progress differ” (De Satgé &
Watson, 2018, p. 3).
The concept of conflicting rationalities engages directly with the question of power: struggle and
conflict, as opposed to consensus-building and collaboration, are inherent to urban planning
processes (Hillier, 2002; Watson, 2003). Not only do power struggles exist among actors with
conflicting rationalities, but power is used by various actors to determine what is and is not rational
(De Satgé & Watson, 2018). The concept is therefore useful for uncovering how power and
(structural) inequalities impact urban development processes. It exposes how the framing of knowl­
edge as “technical” or “expert” is an exercise of power (De Satgé & Watson, 2018). It points to the
deep differences that underlie urban planning priorities and processes and the irreconcilability
which this presents for developing a shared vision of change. The conflicting rationalities concept
has been used mainly by scholars who seek to differentiate their work from that of Northern
theorists and to explain how and why, despite the participation of actor groups in development
projects, there remain crippling disagreements and stalled development processes.

Conflicting Rationalities and Housing in South Africa

In the South African urban planning literature, the term conflicting rationalities is often used
interchangeably with “conflicted rationalities” and “competing rationalities”. Much of this literature
focuses on informal settlements and the planning conflicts which arise between communities and
the state (see Makhale & Landman, 2017; Massey, 2013). While scholars are attentive to the often
“insurmountable” conflicts, they also point to opportunities within this complexity (Myers, 2010,
p. 9). For example, Charlton (2013) argues that the case of Johannesburg’s housing “illuminates
[actors’] overlapping aspirations and mutual shaping of space”, rather than “portraying the state and
the subaltern as clashing over conflicting rationalities” (p. 2). Robins (2006), reflecting on planning
interventions in Joe Slovo, Cape Town, notes that the lack of access to material resources, not
cultural factors or conflicting rationalities, limits the ability of poorer urban residents to engage with
formal planning processes. Locatelli and Nugent (2009), writing on the competing claims made on
urban spaces, argue that while urban residents have their own development norms, they strategi­
cally draw on both formal and non-formal, as well as modernist and non-modernist, mechanisms for
producing urban space. Our contribution supports these efforts to nuance the concept of conflicting
rationalities.
In South Africa, occupations are tightly linked to questions of affordable housing delivery. South
Africa’s housing delivery programme provides the framework within which both occupiers and
government shape their rationalities and logics. The housing programme, developed as part of both
South Africa’s post-apartheid Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP)1 and its rights-
based development framework,2 is arguably the most ambitious national housing programme in
the global South, if not the world (Charlton, 2009). Whilst the statistics are debatable, the national
government claims to have delivered upwards of 4.5 million housing subsidies since 1994.3 The
national housing policies (the most recent of which is called Breaking New Ground [BNG]) and
National Housing Codes (the most recent having been published in 2009) provide the foundation
for policy tools and subsidy instruments aimed at addressing housing shortages in cities
(Huchzermeyer, 2011; Tissington, 2010).
Housing delivery involves the three spheres of government (Van Wyk, 2012). The national
government is responsible for the formulation of the housing policies and funding of housing
 PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE 5

subsidies (Engela & Ajam, 2010). The provincial government, working with private developers, is
responsible for administering the housing grant and delivering on the targets set by the national
government. In the past, the local government did not play a strong role in housing delivery.
However, since 2004, when it was pointed out that city infrastructure plans had to align with the
delivery of new housing projects, local governments (such as the City of Cape Town) were required
to play a more central role, developing human settlements plans and applying to the provinces for
project funds.
To access housing, households must meet several income-related criteria. Qualifying households
are placed on the Housing Demand Database, colloquially called the ‘housing waiting list’ where
they are expected to wait until they are selected for projects. Both those waiting and those who fail
to qualify for subsidies live in informal settlements and in backyard dwellings (i.e. informal structures
in the backyards of formal housing units). In Cape Town, growing unmet demand for housing is
driven by migration to the city, household splitting, and natural growth. Rising land values and
limited upward mobility for poor households create an ever widening group, unable to access
formal, market-based, housing options. The City of Cape Town is fully aware of this challenge: the
Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements, Malusi Booi, confessed that “with the limited
resources we have, we meet our targets. [However] . . . in terms of the demand, no we’re far from
that” (interview, 15 November 2019). This is evidenced by the more than three hundred thousand
households who are still listed on the Demand Database and the increasing number of informal
occupations across the city (Councillor X. Limberg, interview, 13 December 2017).
While many of South Africa’s current low-income areas (called townships) started as land
occupations (Mashego, 2019), today new occupations represent a more overtly political act, and
one which is a response to the many limitations of South Africa’s formal housing delivery apparatus.
The housing delivery programme has created a framework on which both activists’ and the state’s
efforts hinge. Consequently, the programme has shaped both state and community rationalities
concerning occupation, as we discuss in the following section.

Conflicting Rationalities Between the State and Occupiers

There are clear conflicts between the state and occupiers. In this section, we unpack some of these
conflicts.

State Rationality
For the state, occupations reflect a fundamental disregard for the rule of law and ambitions of the
RDP housing programme. At all levels of government, there is agreement that occupations throw
a spanner in the works of well-intentioned plans and programmes aimed at urban development
and housing delivery, especially when occupied land and buildings are earmarked for other
developmental priorities. From the state’s perspective, occupiers should “wait their turn” to
access subsidised housing opportunities, rather than jump over the established systems of
allocation.
Sympathetic officials recognize that people feel forced to occupy sites for want of better options.
However, they argue that occupations make urban management difficult, and thus sacrifice the
wider agenda and the validity of formal processes for the needs of a small group. Underpinning this
logic is a pervasive obsession with compliance and accountability. State officials are concerned with
complying with financial regulations and meeting departmental delivery targets. These metrics of
6 N. NGWENYA AND L. R. CIROLIA

accountability shape the behaviours of state actors involved in addressing housing needs generally,
and occupations in particular.
Within the state, accountability is framed in fiscal terms. The concern is with “ensur[ing] that
public funds are spent to achieve the outcomes for which they were intended” (Mogajane, 2019,
p. 5). The imperatives of fiscal and financial accountability are outlined primarily in the Public
Finance Management Act 1999 (Act No. 1 of 1999 as amended) (PFMA) and its corollary, the Local
Government Municipal Finance Management Act 2003 (No. 56 of 2003 as amended) (MFMA).
Together, the PFMA and the MFMA regulate the management of public finances. This framing of
accountability has direct implications for occupations. For example, in reference to the Helen
Bowden Nurses Home occupation, Jacqui Gooch (interview, 19 November 2019), Head of the
Western Cape Department of Transport and Public Works, argues that it would be “fruitless and
wasteful expenditure” to fix sewage and water pipes in an occupied building, which the department
planned to demolish and replace with mixed-income housing. According to officials, addressing the
needs of occupiers would result in failure to comply with legislation governing the use of public
funds. Within this performance framework, ensuring a “clean audit” is paramount.
In addition to ensuring that no expenditure is deemed “irregular”, officials contend with targets
that are set for each department or directorate. Housing targets are a key source of anxiety and
political debate. They are set annually, and subsequently drive delivery. For example, in Cape Town,
the following targets (among others) were set in 2017/2018: servicing of 2,800 sites in the informal
settlements; provision of 1,200 service points (toilet and tap with hand basin) provided to back­
yarders; and provision of 600 water services points (City of Cape Town, 2017). Occupations make it
difficult for officials to meet these targets, because they divert efforts (and resources), which officials
feel should be spent implementing existing plans. Occupied sites are often dangerous (for example,
they are fire-prone, and sometimes located in flood-prone areas or under power lines) and fre­
quently require immediate and emergency attention. In some cases, occupied sites such as
Graceland and the Woodstock Hospital have been reserved for government-subsidised housing,
resulting in further delays in the delivery of housing projects. The Mayor Dan Plato’s statement to
reporters for BusinessTech (2019) synthesises this perspective. He stated:

Land invasions pose a serious threat to service delivery and housing opportunities as it derails planning
and development processes . . . The City simply cannot allow certain groups or individuals who orches­
trate invasions and disrupt, destroy and incite violence and lawlessness [to continue doing so].

Within government’s overarching rationality with regard to housing delivery, occupiers are “bad”
citizens. They are perceived to be undermining efforts to address the housing backlog by rejecting
the “waiting lists and the system of housing allocation” (Oldfield, 2000, p. 866).4 As Gooch (interview,
19 November 2019) asks, in relation to the Helen Bowden Nurses Home occupation:

Are occupations then intended to be a way to try to jump the queue? . . . To force their way onto a list? . . .
[Occupiers] are then there, they automatically almost have to be catered for . . . differently than what the
normal process [is].

Officials and politicians concerned with the City’s fiscal sustainability further argue that land
occupations fundamentally inhibit the operation of the market, upon which the City of Cape
Town’s finance model rests (e.g., through property tax). In line with the wider thinking within the
Democratic Alliance (DA), the political party that controls the City of Cape Town, Mayor Dan Plato
publicly states that land should be treated as an asset which can be sold to enable the state to meet
its priorities. Reflecting on the disruption of the auction of City-owned property, he said:
 PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE 7

The City expects to raise additional income of R28,000,000 . . . should we achieve our reserve prices at the
auction – this is money that goes directly into delivering services for our residents. (Cape Times, 2019)

In Cape Town, the Anti-Land Invasion Unit (ALIU) is a law enforcement entity that was formed in
2009 by the City of Cape Town to prevent and respond to the illegal occupation of land. The unit
works to protect both state-owned and privately owned land from invasion, particularly in areas
identified as “hot spots”. According to Councillor X. Limberg (interview, 13 December 2017), the City
monitors these hot spots so that they can immediately initiate eviction proceedings should an
occupation get under way. In late 2019, the City allocated additional funding to the unit, including
adding 40 new officers and “hardened” vehicles specifically designed for battling protest actions.
The City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, Alderman J.P. Smith, states that this
new capacity positions the City to respond within 24 hours to new occupations, as well as to protest
action and the vandalism of infrastructure.5
Thus, the ALIU reflects the City’s – and the wider state’s – perception that occupations are
a fundamentally “wrong” response to the state’s inability to provide affordable housing opportu­
nities for the urban poor. The state believes that, within the frameworks and with the tools it has, it is
doing what it can to respond to the challenge. In doing so, the state deploys a rationality and an
institutional programme for repressing evictions predicated on fear of non-compliance, target
chasing, and market-led redistribution. These discourses come up against the rationalities and
practices employed by occupiers. The paper now turns to a discussion of occupier’s rationalities.

Occupiers’ Rationality
In contrast to the state’s rationality of occupiers being “bad citizens”, occupiers – and the non-
government organisations (NGOs) which support them – perceive occupations as a bottom-up
mechanism for realising the right to access adequate housing and basic services, and for correcting
the shortcomings of the market. Occupations, from the occupiers’ perspectives, offer the only way
for those who cannot access the market or state subsidies to continue to survive in Cape Town. In
conjunction with marches, protests and litigation in domestic courts, occupations, serve as mechan­
isms through which to hold the government accountable for its constitutional obligations (Gauri &
Gloppen, 2012).
In most cases, claims to public assets by occupiers stem from the rights enshrined in the
Constitution (Dugard et al., 2014). Reflecting on the formation of the Ses’khona People’s Rights
Movement, leading member, Andile Lili states:
[W]e were then taken through in terms of our rights by [lawyers] so from then we took a decision to say
we cannot allow our people to live under those [conditions], and then we encouraged our people as well
to even grab the land if necessary. (interview, 9 November 2016)

For many occupiers, claims to under-utilised land and vacant buildings and to housing rights are
historical claims. In this sense, occupations are a bottom-up restitution programme, so to speak, in
so far as some of the occupiers are able to reclaim spaces in the city that belonged to their
forefathers. As Jacobs (2017), who is part of the Woodstock Hospital occupation, states:
What I want, I want District Six back. There where I was born. My grandmother died here and lays buried
here. So too, I want to die here.

This rationality is confirmed through a range of practices in addition to the occupation of land, such
as the (re)naming of occupation sites by occupiers. Three of the four occupation sites under study
8 N. NGWENYA AND L. R. CIROLIA

have been renamed. The Helen Bowden Nurses Home, Woodstock Hospital and Graceland have
been renamed Ahmed Kathrada House, Cissie Gool House, and Izwe Lethu, respectively.6 The
unofficial renaming of occupation sites intimates that occupations are equally understood by
occupiers as a “struggle for self-determination” (Themba Nkosi, interview, 25 August 2017),
a struggle in which occupiers seek to reframe themselves as “good” citizens who deserve the rights
afforded to the wealthy.
Occupations, and the litigation efforts to support them, function as a protest against the (re)
commodification and financialization of housing, which has led to further displacement of the urban
poor, while leaving many homes vacant (Ashman et al., 2011; Cheng, 2017; Farha, 2017). Put differently,
occupations are a form of resistance against the commodification of housing, which has resulted in
housing becoming increasingly unaffordable as it is incorporated into “global markets where its [sic]
worth and purpose are divorced from the needs of those who live in it” (Hohmann, 2019, p. 15). As
Shandu (2019), Executive Director of Ndifuna Ukwazi, argues about their challenge of the provincial
government’s sale of well-located plots of land in the courts: “The case is about us challenging the
obligations of the City and the Province to use well-located land for affordable housing”. Litigation is,
nevertheless, an expensive process and remains largely the preserve of occupiers who have the support
of well-resourced NGOs. Expressing a similar sentiment, Reclaim the City (2018) argues:
Property power maintains inequality and keeps [the] majority of our people dispossessed and homeless.
If we are going to build an inclusive, equal and just society and economy then we must resist property
power and public land must be redistributed.

As one Occupier (2019) remarks in agreement: “It’s our government, meaning it’s our land, our
building”. Mobilisation and litigation against the commodification of urban land have led to a number
of successes for occupiers, including City of Cape Town identifying ten parcels of land in the inner
city, including the Woodstock Hospital site, for affordable housing (Daniels & Mzantsi, 2018).
In addition to resisting daily evictions and litigation, occupiers and their allies deploy a range of
tactics in an attempt to prove the importance of their cause. These tactics include regular and
ongoing protests, and the disruption of the auctions of several properties in the central business
district. In contrast to the state’s rationality, which sees occupations as both illegitimate and anti-
development, occupiers and the NGOs that support them see occupations as a legitimate and
necessary response to the housing shortage and the slow pace of housing delivery. Occupiers
similarly envisage occupations as a necessary corrective to the workings of the market, thus reflecting
a progressive politics in addition to basic survivalism. This reflects a fundamentally different under­
standing of urban development, its purpose and its stakes compared to that of the state.

Conflicting Rationalities Within the State and Within Occupations

While the rationalities of the two groups of actors do conflict, neither the government’s nor the
occupiers’ rationalities should be viewed in an essentialist manner. They are inherently complex, and
this complexity is unmasked once one begins to examine the non-hegemonic narratives employed
by segments of each actor group.

Conflicting Rationalities Within the State

Within the state, conflicts exist primarily between the different spheres of government, between
directorates within the City, and between political parties. In the case of Cape Town, the primary
 PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE 9

conflict of rationalities among the spheres of government is between the Western Cape Provincial
Government and the City of Cape Town. Despite ostensibly working towards the same goal (and
even being governed by the same political party, the DA), the two spheres operate in terms of
disparate logics. The Western Cape Provincial Government’s Department of Human Settlements
(DoHS) is driven by the need to meet its housing delivery targets. These targets are set by the
National Department of Human Settlements, and the Western Cape Government is responsible for
using the housing grant to meet these targets. The fastest and easiest way to meet these targets is to
build on low cost, peripheral land, on the outskirts of the city.
While the City of Cape Town is concerned with meeting targets, it carries the costs of this
approach. The target-driven approach, primarily driven by provincial housing departments, has
led to sprawling, low density neighbourhoods with costly infrastructure networks, which the City is
mandated to manage and maintain (Graham & Gull, 2013). Moreover, organized occupations have
created tensions and animosities between the City and residents (at times fuelled by NGO mobilisa­
tion and agitation). The state’s approach to housing delivery is creating long-term financial and
political costs for the City that are becoming increasingly apparent and detrimental. This concern is
shared by the National Treasury’s Cities Support Programme (CSP), which was developed to improve
the alignment of urban investments and to improve urban efficiency and long-term sustainability
(Cirolia & Smit, 2017). As an official with experience both in the City of Cape Town and the National
Treasury said:

The current approach is not working. So it is no wonder people occupy land. We must scale up the
upgrading of these [occupied] sites so that people can have dignity but also because we cannot meet
their needs through the current systems. (interview, 20 January 2020)

In addition to issues between spheres of government, conflicts between directorates and units
within the City that shape the state’s wider approach to housing and occupations exist. The City
has been restructured many times in the past four years. The names of directorates have changed,
as have their groupings within the City’s overall organigram. Regardless of the structure, the
housing delivery and the integrated spatial planning functions have experienced tensions in
mandate and ideology. Using the 2019 titles, the Directorate of Human Settlements and the
Directorate of Spatial Planning and Environment are split, and have conflicted agendas. The
Department of Human Settlements must meet the delivery targets set by the Province and
publicized by City politicians. In contrast, the Directorate of Spatial Planning and Environment is
mandated to address the apartheid (spatial) legacy of Cape Town, using the tools such as Spatial
Development Frameworks and land use planning. The planners in this department are often at
loggerheads with housing officials, demanding that they stop building projects on the outskirts of
the city and focus on inner city sites. Many of the planners working for the City were trained at
University of Cape Town’s School of Planning, which took a firm stance on the importance of
working with informality, addressing issues of spatial inequality, and restructuring the post-
apartheid city. In many ways, this reflects an unconventional approach to planning that embraces
urbanism and the practices of the poor. However, the planners’ concern with incorporating
informality into planning processes and spatial transformation have had little traction, given
that their tools are largely regulatory in nature. Other directorates, such as Human Settlements,
have large budgets and significant political sway within the City. Planning, on the other hand,
does not.
A final and important conflict of rationalities exists between political office bearers representing
different political parties in various spheres of government. A case in point is a statement by Julius
10 N. NGWENYA AND L. R. CIROLIA

Malema, the president of the third-largest political party in South Africa, the Economic Freedom
Fighters, made during the party’s elective conference in 2016:

If you see a piece of land and you like it, don’t apologise, go and occupy that land. That land belongs to
us.

Malema has since repeated this call (Postman, 2019), which Councillor M. Booi of the Democratic
Alliance (interview, 15 November 2019) has called “reckless”, echoing the belief within Cape Town’s
ruling party that the rule of law and “orderly” development are essential for the city.
The internal conflicts within government are perhaps more debilitating for the development
of a shared plan than the conflicts that exist between communities and government. There are,
nevertheless, many useful points of alignment where particular actors within government do
share the communities’ perspectives, and these provide fertile ground for alliance building.

Conflicting Rationalities Amongst Occupiers

Alongside clear conflicts in rationalities within government, conflicting rationalities appear
amongst occupiers. While occupiers often speak unanimously in public fora, deep differences
exist amongst them. In particular, occupiers fundamentally disagree about the nature of the
housing they should be demanding. Some occupiers argue that the standard provision, as per
the RDP housing programme, of fully subsidised, freestanding units of 40 m2 on 100 m2 plots
should be met. They believe that this is the only product which qualifies as adequate housing and
the fulfilment of their constitutional rights.Booi (2017), a community leader in Khayelitsha,
responding to the City’s suggestion for medium- to high-density development of Graceland,
said: “For them to tell us that they will be building apartments – for us to rent these apartments –
to eventually own them is completely unfair.” In contrast, other occupiers argue that multi-storey
housing in the form of either rental or sectional title properties on well-located sites is a suitable
solution. Not only does this allow for more people to be accommodated on each of the sites; it
allows for those who do not qualify for RDP housing (because their incomes are too high) to stay
on the sites using the rental option. Many occupiers, in the case of the Helen Bowden Nurses
Home especially, do not meet the criteria for fully subsidised housing (J. Gooch, interview,
19 November 2019). This group of occupiers is aware of this and are willing to pay rent to live
in housing provided by the state. As Adonis (2019) states:

We will pay the money that is needed. We will rent with that money . . . We know that people have to pay
rent, we won’t stay for free. We will pay.

A further conflict of rationalities exists amongst the occupiers over whether or not the state
should actually provide the houses they are demanding. Some occupiers believe that govern­
ment must build houses on their behalf. As a Reclaim the City activist (Reclaim the City, 2017a)
notes:

We want to remind government of its obligation. Section 26 of the Constitution states that everybody
must have access to adequate housing. Government must therefore provide the policy and plans, with
timelines, to demonstrate its commitment to providing adequate housing for all.

Yet, others, namely the occupiers in Khayelitsha, argue that they will build their own houses. As
Maasdorp (2017), national spokesperson of the Black First, Land First movement, has pointed out:
 PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE 11

The people aren’t even saying build [for] us, they are saying we will build for ourselves. We will build our
own places to stay on land that is open, that is not being used.

Reiterating this position, an Izwe Lethu occupier (interview, 22 November 2016) stated: “at least
singafumana lomhlaba, at least umntu angazokhela noba yihoki yakhe ene four rooms” [if we can at
least get land, a person could even build themselves a shack with four rooms].
The conflicts of rationalities discussed above have an income/class dimension. The primary
conflict is between occupiers who need fully subsidised housing and those who can afford to
pay for subsidised rental housing, namely unemployed occupiers and working class occupiers,
respectively. This conflict, spurred by different visions of the end housing product and who
ought to provide said product, have significantly delayed development of the various occupied
sites. In the absence of a shared vision for development, and the existence of disagreements
about the roles of the key stakeholders, the groups of occupiers have begun engaging with
government officials independently (occupier, personal communication, 19 October 2019;
J. Gooch, interview, 19 November 2019). This has resulted in further delays in development of
the various sites. For example, the groups within the Helen Bowden Nurses Home occupation
are engaging separately with the Provincial Department of Public Works (the owner of the site
and building) (J. Gooch, interview, 19 November 2019; Reclaim the City, 2017b). While one
group has been negotiating for the upgrade of the water and sewerage pipes in the building,
another group has accepted the use of portable toilets. This, according to one occupier
(personal communication, 19 October 2019), has stalled the provision of utility services (such
as electricity and water) within the Helen Bowden Nurses Home. In Graceland, conflicting
rationalities amongst occupiers on the nature of the housing product to be built on the site
have compounded the conflict of rationalities between the City, its development partner,
namely the Khayelitsha Community Trust, and occupiers. Thus, the development of
Graceland, which has been earmarked for a mixed-income housing development, has been
delayed further.

Implications for Planning Theory and Practice

Within Southern planning scholarship, the concept of conflicting rationalities has provided a useful
corrective to the panacea of communicative discourses (De Satgé & Watson, 2018). Occupations are
one key site for exploring conflicting rationalities. However, in the case of Cape Town, and South
Africa generally, occupations are firmly situated within wider debates on housing and urban
development. These debates reflect the incredible diversity among actors within the sector. They
exemplify, as Watson (2006) argues, the multiple points of dynamic, power-infused differences that
shape urban outcomes in Southern cities.
In this paper, we echo scholars’ concerns about differences of rationality between the state and
communities, and that such differences result in conflicts which occupations undeniably fore­
ground. Additionally, we show that the ability of both the state and communities to develop
internal consensus is equally strained. Our discussion of the conflicting rationalities within the
state foregrounds conflicts between the spheres of government departments within the City of
Cape Town, and the political and technical arms of the state. We show how competing objectives
within the state give rise to an incoherent operational environment with misaligned targets and
goals. Such conflicts are perhaps endemic to a state which is heterogeneous, evolving, and wrestling
with a catalogue of objectives and requirements. Our discussion of the conflicting rationalities
12 N. NGWENYA AND L. R. CIROLIA

within groups of occupiers, on the other hand, highlights the heterogeneity within communities,
particularly the fundamental tensions related both to what occupiers’ rights should be and how best
housing needs can be met. These are not simply differences of opinion; they reflect much more
sustained and internalised discourses related to the developmental state, the right to housing, and
the future of urban development.
To argue that conflicts within communities and within the state exist is not a novel point. Both
anthropology and human geography have dissected the conflicts within communities, for example,
related to the formations of internal hierarchies and nested power dynamics (Pickerill, 2009; West,
2005). Similarly, disciplines concerned with the dynamic and contested nature of governance, such
as political science or geography, have pointed to the often-debilitating conflicts that play out
among state actors. Drawing these ideas into discussions on planning theory provides us with
unique insights into how conflicting rationalities, and the resultant development delays, hamper
efforts to address not only the housing backlog but the apartheid spatial legacy.
Planning theory is naturally linked to planning practice, and has taken a keen interest in decision-
making, not only as a conceptual subject but as a practical site of intervention. Shaping rational
decision-making processes, particularly those related to urban development, is a central concern of
both planning theory and practice. The acknowledgement of conflicting rationalities within groups
adds to the complexity within the environment in which planning professionals practice. This
complexity is not fully accounted for in the decontextualised communicative/collaborative planning
theory, which downplays the impact of power imbalances in urban development processes. These
power differentials make it difficult to foster the sincere, truthful and comprehensible form of
communication that communicative and collaborative planners argue is inherent in planning
processes (Healey, 2002).
Planners must deal with the struggles and conflicts between communities and authorities (Hillier,
2002; Watson, 2003). As such, planning practice often finds itself deeply intertwined with mediation.
As mediators, planning practitioners must have some knowledge of how occupiers or social move­
ments mobilise and organise themselves, and work with the complexity of their organisational
structures and demands. Simultaneously, planners must understand that, within the political and
bureaucratic structures of the state, they are relatively weak. They often hold small budgets
compared to those of the infrastructure departments. In many cities planning is a local government
function, and local governments are generally weak. If planning practice wants to operate skilfully at
this challenging interface, complex synergies and alliances are needed. A deeper examination of
each of the actor groups involved in the planning process can highlight areas where possible
synergies exist (Charlton, 2013; Locatelli & Nugent, 2009).
Turning attention, finally, to the question of human settlements development, in Southern cities
occupation has always been a key mode of city-building. While deeply contested, it remains one of
the few options for households who are not served by the formal market or public sector delivery
systems. In validating occupations as a legitimate mode of urbanism, we of course bump up against
the modernist regimes of property rights and land use regulation. It would be a mistake to
romanticise occupations as a panacea for top-down and market-driven development. However,
there must be space to acknowledge the contribution made by occupation practices to the
production of a more inclusive urban future.
 PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE 13

Notes
1. The RDP included, as one of its key pillars, the development of the lower end of the property market and
black home ownership.
2. The 1996 Constitution included the right to housing, which has been confirmed to be justiciable in the
Constitutional Court judgment of the case Government of the Republic of South Africa and Others
v Grootboom and Others (CCT11/00) [2000]. The Grootboom case has had a significant impact on housing
policy and the implementation of socio-economic rights, by confirming the justiciability of socio-
economic rights (Pillay, 2002).
3. The reason for the disagreement over numbers is largely due to concerns over “double counting” of
subsidies. This occurs when the delivery of the site and the top structure occur in different financial years.
Reporting inconsistencies at the local and provincial levels make it harder to obtain accurate data on
housing delivery. The figure of 4.5 million was cited by Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu in 2017; see
https://www.parliament.gov.za/news/providing-houses-all-stimulates-growth-minister-tells-ncop-
during-policy-debate (accessed June 1 2020).
4. Tissington et al. (2013) argue that it is not clear what this means in terms of state discourse, as those
registered on the housing demand database are not served on a “first come, first served” basis. There is,
therefore, no queue.
5. This is best articulated by some of the political media postings about the ALIU on the DA website; see
https://www.da.org.za/government/undefined/2019/11/law-enforcement-bolsters-its-anti-land-invasion
-unit.
6. “Izwe Lethu” is a name from the Nguni family of languages, namely isiXhosa; as translated by a number of
Pan-Africanists it means “our nation” or “our land”. Ahmed Kathrada was an apartheid activist and
political prisoner. Zainunnisa “Cissie” Gool was an anti-apartheid political and civil rights leader.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This article was completed with support from the PEAK Urban programme, funded by UKRI’s Global Challenge
Research Fund, Grant Ref: ES/P011055/1.

Notes on Contributors
Nobukhosi Ngwenya is a research fellow at the African Centre for Cities. Her research focus is on community-
based (read citizen) planning and development of human settlements, and the intersections between the
urban land question and questions of identity, citizenship and belonging historically and in the present.
nobukhosingwenya@gmail.com.
Liza Rose Cirolia is a researcher at the African Centre for Cities. Her work is largely focused on the social,
political, technical and institutional dimensions of urban infrastructure, decentralization, and human settle­
ments in African cities.

ORCID
Nobukhosi Ngwenya http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0039-6650
14 N. NGWENYA AND L. R. CIROLIA

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