Housing activism through research

“My interest in occupation lies in the practice being such an embodied manifestation of the housing crisis – people have to literally take their housing into their own hands and self-build when formal housing markets are too expensive, and public housing delivery is too slow.”

University of Cape Town (UCT) master’s in environmental and geographical science student Kezia Fortuin has in her research responded to a crisis which often comes to a head in the City of Cape Town: homelessness. Kezia said the occupation of buildings such as Cissie Gool House comes as a result of the housing crisis – and her focus lies in understanding the phenomenon. On Monday, 2 September, she will walk across the stage in the Sarah Baartman Hall to receive her certificate.

In trying to understand the housing crisis, a couple of questions need to be asked, such as: Why do people occupy land or buildings? How do they occupy them? How do occupations sustain themselves?

“When I began my master’s in 2022, I knew I wanted the study site of my research to remain the Cissie Gool House occupation so that I could deepen my understanding of the site, but I wanted to become more engaged with the community than I could do during my honours,” said Kezia.

“My late father was a teacher all his life, and my mother an estate agent before she went into the affordable housing space. So, my father instilled in me a deep value for education, and my mother a deep value for affordable housing. You could say that my pursuit of academia and my research interests in housing have been shaped by my upbringing.”

“My father instilled in me a deep value for education, and my mother a deep value for affordable housing.”

“When I came to university I learned, for the first time, how fortunate I had been, and how deeply segregated Cape Town is on all fronts: infrastructure, amenities, basic services, tenure security. As a result of this ‘awakening’, I devoted my career to understanding the housing crisis and playing a role in fostering alternative futures through research and education.”

Recently, the Council of the City of Cape Town decided to go ahead with a public participation process to release Cissie Gool House for the development of affordable housing, plunging some 900 people into a state of panic that they may be displaced.

Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis was quoted as saying the property was “one of the biggest social housing opportunities” in the city but that “the major obstacle of the unlawful occupation of the site” has “delayed” the process. Kezia believes this view is biased: “Unfortunately, the mayor’s narrative is that the occupation is slowing down the delivery of affordable housing on the site – positioning the residents as the cause of the housing delays. This narrative is deeply biased and does not consider that occupations happen as a consequence of a housing crisis, as opposed to the cause.”

Kezia believes more meaningful and direct engagements should be had between the mayor and the residents at the occupation.

Emotional distance

Turning to her research, Kezia noted that carrying out the ethnographic study was “challenging”. “Many of the themes of displacement and ‘unhoming’ that surfaced throughout the research struck very close to home – as black South Africans, we are familiar with these themes all too well; we grow up with them whether in lived reality or in discourse.

“Science often advocates for researchers to maintain an emotional distance from their study to remain objective, but this is often not possible in the social sciences. I am fortunate to be emerging as a researcher at a time when many scholars in the social sciences have already laid the groundwork for engaging our emotional responses to the world as researchers,” said Kezia.

“I was involved in the labour of the Cissie Gool House resident-led teams in the kitchen, garden, maintenance, repair as well as safety and security teams.

“I want to expand outside of Cape Town for my PhD and explore how occupations function in cities like Johannesburg and Sao Paulo.”

“In the kitchen, we prepared food on a Friday morning for the feeding scheme, which aims to give children a warm meal on a Friday after school. In the garden, we planted fruits and vegetables, we fertilised the soil, weeded the soil and re-designed the garden. With the maintenance and repair and safety and security, I was involved in a day of ceiling repairs; we were patching up a hole in the ceiling of the building, which had broken because of ageing and weather. This hole had resulted in a leak into one of the resident’s rooms. The resident’s maintenance and repair work to the building has a notable positive effect on resident’s health, safety and quality of life in the building.”

Kezia added: “I think what continues to be important in our work is conveying to policy and public stakeholders that what is happening at Cissie Gool House is actually part of the solution – the expertise they have developed regarding the maintenance of the building and its infrastructure together with the networks of care and solidarity that have developed to repair the community all signify that the residents could actually be stakeholders in the redevelopment of the site if there was sufficient political willingness.”

For Kezia, her academic journey continues as she dives straight into her PhD. “I want to continue this journey of housing research and scholar activism. Where my previous academic research has been based on the housing landscape in Cape Town, I want to expand outside of Cape Town for my PhD and explore how occupations function in cities like Johannesburg and Sao Paulo.”