A picture of Nelson Mandela watches over the dimly lit room where Maggie Mothemba has lived for six years. “He’s like my father,” says the 57-year-old, who remembers the day in April 1994 that she voted for Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa’s first democratic election.
She was then “full of hope” to be on the list for a government-subsidised house to raise her two children – a key ANC’ election promise. But Mothemba is still waiting, along with 2.5 million households languishing in a housing crisis. In 2017, facing eviction from a private rental , she moved into a derelict hospital in Woodstock, a Cape Town neighbourhood, squatted by people protesting the slow pace of affordable housing development.
