Race, politics, and property: Two cases of gentrification (Part 1)

21 October 2013 – Ted Baumann

Aerial view of Muizenberg, Cape Town, South Africa (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

I moved to Decatur, Georgia, six years ago, after 25 years living in a small neighbourhood of Cape Town, South Africa, called Muizenberg.  David Rotenstein’s recent blog posts  about his experience in Decatur – which led to his abandoning the suburb – struck me as an interesting opportunity to compare and contrast the politics of gentrification in the two places.

Muizenberg and Decatur are similar in many ways.  Both are small, well-defined enclaves of a larger metropolitan area.  Both have a history of decline, followed by rapid gentrification.  Both communities are riven by disagreements over the nature and desirability of that process.

There are also differences.  Unlike Decatur, which is a self-governing mini-municipality, Muizenberg is a district of the City of Cape Town and represented on the City Council by a single councilor.  Most public issues are decided by the Cape Town City Council.

Significantly, South African government structure is also more centralised than in the USA.  Cape Town’s rule-making flexibility is limited by the Constitution, as well as by Parliament.   During the constitutional negotiations of 1990-94, the African National Congress and its allies worked hard to ensure that municipalities would be inclusive, large enough to ensure a balance of interests, and subordinated to national policy.  This was a tough process, since the position of the majority-white political parties was that small micro-municipalities – what I have called “cantonment” – were preferable.  Although not directly stated, the goal was to allow the largely ethnic and class-based neighbourhoods created by apartheid to maintain their status through the use of local zoning, tax, and other laws.

Nevertheless, Muizenberg did manage to obtain a degree of self-direction after 2004, when the Cape Town City Council – dominated at the time by the predominantly white Democratic Party – approved an “improvement district” by-law.  This allowed individual neighbourhoods to choose, by referendum, to add a levy to residents’ city tax bills.  This would be used to fund a Municipal Improvement District (MID), managed and run by a Board elected by residents.  The purpose of the MIDs was described as to “enhance and supplement the municipal services provided by the City of Cape Town,” “facilitate investment … and a co-operative approach between the City and the private sector,” and “halt the degeneration and facilitate the upliftment of distressed business and mixed-use areas.”

Led by a coalition of long-term residents, businesspeople, and well-heeled newcomers, ratepayers approved a Muizenberg MID in 2005 and chose a Board.  The vote for the MID was lopsided, since by far the majority of the area’s low-income residents didn’t participate, either because they didn’t know about the initiative or assumed they weren’t welcome to participate.  History is central to understanding why they felt so marginalised.

View of Muizenberg from the beach (Source: Flickr user andavis86)

Muizenberg’s is a fascinating story of a British imperial seaside resort that became an entrepôt for successive waves of immigrants fleeing the Bolsheviks, World War Two, and finally, civil wars in central Africa.  Its attractiveness to immigrants lies in three factors.

First, Muizenberg’s central area is dominated by flat-blocks built to accommodate holidaying British civil servants from India and other imperial possessions.  They are essentially studio apartments without bathrooms or kitchens, which are shared amongst several units.  They are ideal for transients and singles but of no interest to permanent residents, especially families.

Second, most of these buildings, as well as many houses, are owned by absentee landlords who bought them during Muizenberg’s era of decline in the 1970s and 80s.  These owners tend to hang on to them for rental and speculative purposes and have little interest in improvement.

Finally, Muizenberg lies on Cape Town’s north-south railway line, which makes it a pragmatic place to live for those without the means to own a car.

This combination of factors has made Muizenberg more socio-economically heterogeneous than Decatur.  A small group of mostly white gentrifiers, drawn by Muizenberg’s seaside location and late Victorian architecture, co-exists with a large group of mostly darker-skinned refugees, who come mainly from central Africa or Cape Town’s former black and coloured townships.[1]  For the former, Muizenberg is an opportunity to create a genteel seaside village with rising property values and a revived small business sector.  For the latter, all renters, Muizenberg is a solution, if imperfect, to their housing needs, as well as a safe space to escape the depredations of Cape Town’s townships.

Naturally, given the large proportion of single men amongst the renter population, Muizenberg also became a magnet for drug-dealers, prostitutes, and other entrepreneurs on the margins of the approved economy, much to the consternation of the gentrifiers.

~ Ted Baumann

In Part 2:  The Muizenberg MID goes to work