Cato Manor: cruel past, pivotal future

Abstract

Sophiatown in Johannesburg, District Six in Cape Town, and Cato Manor in Durban have become political metaphors for urban dispossession and resistance. Cato Manor has the most complex and violently contested history of land ownership and occupation of any area in Durban. In the early 1960s, the Durban Corporation began to expropriate the land from Indian owners and cleared the area of African shack dwellers and of most Indian residents. Despite the development of some Indian housing during the mid‐1980s, the land still remains largely vacant. Africans are re‐establishing themselves in shack settlements in the area.

The future of Cato Manor is now a major political controversy. The entrenched segregation of South Africa cities makes it extremely difficult to redress the legacy of past policies: all require massive investment in urban infrastructural amenities and low‐income housing. Cato Manor and District Six are the only two large areas of urban land available for planned development of new housing within any South African city. Planning for the best use of Cato Manor is highly complex and has to take account of competing and contradictory claims to the land. The current state of negotiations over the future of the land is hardly a promising beginning. Cato Manor remains a highly contested urban space.