Cape Town, South Africa – Thandi Jolingana, 46, smiles proudly as she shows off the bathroom she built in her corrugated iron shack after her husband went to relieve himself in a communal toilet one night and was robbed at gunpoint.
Zolingana lives in a slum known as Taiwan on the edge of Cape Town's Khayelitsha township – a place where a private toilet is a luxury.
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“I'm a rich girl,” she jokes, explaining that she could live more comfortably if she didn't have to financially support several unemployed relatives in addition to her two children.
Jolingana works as a nurse's assistant. With his civil servant salary, he is one of the few people in the informal settlement who can afford indoor plumbing. Meanwhile, her neighbors use a row of outdoor toilets that city officials supply at the rate of about one cubicle for every 10 households. For Jolingana, public facilities are a constant reminder of the municipality's broken promises.
The lack of services in the township has again come into the spotlight after Cape Town Mayor Geordyn Hill-Lewis announced controversial plans to build a wall to keep out criminals on the N2 highway, which adjoins Cape Town International Airport as well as a series of townships.
“I'm surprised they have money for a wall but no money to buy land,” Jolingana said, referring to a promise to relocate his community to such an area.
Her unhappiness with services in Khayelitsha is such that she only accepts work in better-equipped, former white suburbs through the agency that employs her. When her five-year-old son is ill, she travels more than 20 km (12 mi) to Belleville – a former suburb known only for whites – to avoid the long queues and overcrowding at the nearest day hospital.
“In the trauma (wards) you'll see people lying on the floor, sitting since yesterday, so I can't stand that,” she says.
Guiding Al Jazeera through the maze of narrow streets in the township, Jolingana points out the health and safety risks of existing facilities. In a row of community toilets about 50 meters (164 ft) from their home, residents installed cement foundations beneath a toilet after it collapsed in 2018, trapping a woman inside. She says the structures are also vulnerable to the flooding that spreads into the settlement from the surrounding wetlands every winter.
Residents say city money should be used to fix problems like this instead of building an expensive wall.
Mayor Hill-Lewis, a member of the Democratic Alliance (DA) party, which is part of the Government of National Unity (GNU), told the city council on 29 January that Cape Town intends to spend 108 million rand ($6.5 million) on a crime-fighting initiative known as the N2 Edge Project. But local media reports say the project could actually cost as much as 180 million rand ($10.8m).
In addition to the wall, the project also includes security cameras, better lighting, safety barriers for recreational spaces and Metro Police patrols, the mayor said.
'Big problem'
Khayelitsha and surrounding townships have long been plagued by crime, recently prompting President Cyril Ramaphosa to deploy the army to stem a wave of gang-related violence in the Western Cape, but residents say authorities only pay attention when middle-class motorists are victimized.
One particular incident made national headlines in December, when robbers stabbed 64-year-old Karin van Aardt, a retired white teacher, to death on the notorious N2 road as she and her husband arrived in Cape Town on a holiday from another province.
A few weeks ago, Members of Parliament warned travelers traveling to Cape Town about the dangers they face near the airport.
Liesel van der Merwe, an MP from the Inkatha Freedom Party, part of the GNU, called for visible policing at traffic lights and intersections considered crime hotspots, while another coalition partner, Freedom Front Plus, wanted to repair damaged highway fences, reinstall faulty security cameras and send permanent armed patrols to high-risk areas.
“The problem is very big and very widespread,” said Peter Mulder, leader of the FF Plus party. “The murders and crime wave at the airport are indicative of what is happening across the country.”
According to official figures tabled in Parliament, 42 criminal cases were reported to police at Cape Town International Airport between April 1, 2024 and March 31, 2025.
A Western Cape spokesperson for the South African National Roads Agency also told local media last year that on the N2 and the nearby R300 freeway, the agency had recorded 564 crime-related incidents in 2024, and 362 incidents between January and August 2025.
This is still a small portion of crimes reported nationwide in South Africa, which has the highest crime and murder rates in the world outside war zones.
Five of the 10 cities with the highest crime rates worldwide are found in South Africa, according to statista.
South Africa's 'Berlin Wall'
Nevertheless, when Mayor Hill-Lewis announced her security response in January she was widely condemned, with critics accusing her of avoiding the social issues facing slum residents.
Especially the wall came under fire.
The structure is expected to be three meters (10 ft) high and extend nine kilometers (5.6 mi) from the airport, which has been dubbed “hell route” after years of violent attacks on the route.
Members of the GNU's leading party, the African National Congress (ANC), also criticized the plans.
Ndithini Tyhido, the ANC's top council official in Cape Town, criticized Hill-Lewis for planning to create a “South African Berlin Wall” and urged the government to invest money in community-based crime prevention, such as increasing stipends for neighborhood watch groups.
Good Party councilor Chad Davids, another GNU member, said the city was “prosperous on paper, administratively broken, and morally confused in its priorities”.
“We are told the budget is 'record-breaking', yet clinics are incomplete, fire stations are delayed, housing developments are stalled, roads are incomplete and community facilities are deteriorating,” he said.
housing backlog
The City of Cape Town has won praise for good governance and superb service delivery in a thriving city centre, where tourists enjoy first-world amenities.
But critics say its track record with black township residents has been largely as bad as that of the ANC-led national government.
In 2010, the ANC's Youth League lodged a complaint with the South African Human Rights Commission after the city installed closed toilets in another informal settlement in Khayelitsha, known as Makhaza.
The toilets were supposed to be temporary while a housing project was completed in the city, but controversy arose when a group of residents refused to surround the toilets themselves, as agreed with community leaders.
Ultimately a court forced the city to pay for the enclosures.
The city has also been criticized for its slow response to the housing backlog in places like Khayelitsha, where Zolingana has lived in a shack since 1987.
Talks about a housing project to accommodate Taiwanese residents began in 2016 and aimed to relocate 4,500 households.
A community steering committee was formed two years later to guide the process, but Jolingana, a committee member, says a city official attended a meeting for the first time last year and promised the move would begin in February this year.
This has not happened till now.
'This is a political game'
Cape Town's poor residents accuse the local government of favoring its political strongholds when it comes to the allocation of resources such as housing – particularly those living in historically white and “coloured” neighbourhoods.
This perception is boosted by the fact that the City of Cape Town is run by a mostly white DA party in one of only two provinces that have escaped the national dominance of the ANC, the party that led South Africa out of the racist apartheid regime and into democracy in 1994.
“If the city is saying they are building a wall to protect people on the N2, why can't they move people out of that area to a place where there is no crime?” asked Nomkondiso Ntsethe, a 65-year-old pensioner who lives in a cottage in Taiwan with his 13 children and grandchildren.
“This is a political game,” she said. “They're separating the poor from the rich. It's segregation.”
The City of Cape Town referred Al Jazeera's questions The provincial government was informed about the Taiwan Housing Project, which in turn said it had handed over the project to the city in September 2024.
Mayor Hill-Lewis, who last year pegged the city's housing backlog at nearly 600,000, remains defiant amid the latest criticism.
On February 8, he posted a video on X showing a broken fence along the N2 highway and criticized the police and the country's road management agency for failing to keep nearby communities safe.
“This barrier was built 20 years ago when the ANC was in charge of Cape Town – the same party is now screaming hysterically and hypocritically about our plans to fix the security barrier to keep the people of Cape Town safe,” he said.
The video also showed residents of a nearby informal settlement supporting the idea of building a wall next to their residence.
While debate continues online about their efforts, Zolingana and her neighbors are preparing for a fight to oppose the wall.
The Informal Settlement Forum, a local coalition, issued a rally this week calling on civil society groups to join in “peaceful protest against policies that undermine dignity and equality.”
It also appealed to law firms and legal practitioners to provide free assistance in their fight “to ensure transparency, accountability and legitimate governance”.
Meanwhile, Jolingana is living with the daily memories of her life.
“Even at work, my coworkers always ask, 'When are you going to buy a car?' They don't know my situation. I always say, 'If you could wear my shoes, I don't think they would fit you,'” she said.
“In the name of Jesus, I can cope, because there is no other way. Yes, there is no other way. I am coping.”