ABSTRACT
In 2009, housing activists from across the Cape Flats began meeting at a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Salt River called the International Labour Research and Information Group (ILRIG). This was a direct outgrowth of an ILRIG-run community activist course, similar to those offered by various left NGOs in many South African cities, and soon began to operate under the moniker ‘Housing Assembly’. Five years later, the Housing Assembly is a vibrant activist organisation, no longer simply a space for discussion, but an association that attempts to coordinate housing struggles across the City of Cape Town. After a number of its early recruits were involved in land occupations in Mitchell’s Plain in 2011 and 2012, the group assumed a very different identity from that with which it began. Whereas it began as a haphazard talk shop for existing activists, it quickly grew into an expansive (and expanding) organisation with local branches in neighborhoods across the Cape Flats.
