Inside South Africa's 'hijacked' buildings: 'All we want is a place to call home'

Boys play in a stairwell in Cissie Gool House, an abandoned hospital now home to over 1,000 people. By painting, decorating and maintaining the building, its new residents have managed to turn it into a decent home for themselves and their families within striking distance of central Cape Town. (Tommy Trenchard for NPR)

Under the cover of darkness on the night of March 27, 2017, housing activists snuck past the guards of two government-owned buildings in central Cape Town — a derelict hospital and an abandoned nursing home — and took up residence. The activists, who belong to a social movement called Reclaim the City, were protesting gentrification and what they saw as the government's failure to provide affordable housing in what remains, nearly three decades after the end of apartheid, a deeply divided city.

Nearly six years later, they're still there, and the occupations that started out as simple acts of political protest have grown into a large-scale community-building project that provides a home for some 2,000 people. The government says the buildings have been hijacked. The occupiers say they were left with no choice but to forcibly reclaim these spaces in a city that is gradually squeezing them out.