Geographic

Khayelitsha

the ‘new home’

Khayelitsha, or ‘new home’ in isiXhosa, is the second largest township in South Africa after Soweto in Johannesburg. It is situated on the periphery of the City of Cape Town (30 -35km from the CBD) and next to the N2 leading into Cape Town. Officially established in 1983, Khayelitsha was constructed to resettle African residents from the Western Cape.

Khayelitsha was proposed to be 1070 hectares with four ‘towns’, each made up of four villages of 1500 residents per village. The original planned populations size was 200,000 people, this was subsequently doubled to 400,000 people by 2011.

Today Khayelitsha is home to an estimated 2,400,000 people and consists of a minimum of 22 separate settlements. It has the largest single concentration of informal settlements in the City many of which are located on land that is unsuitable for housing as a result of flooding. There is a continued growth in shack numbers, estimated at 10,000 per annum.

Housing varies from formal state (RDP) houses on a separate stand, informal housing in the backyards of the formal houses, and, the majority, shacks in informal settlements.