Nyanga, Cape Town

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Nyanga is a Township in Cape Town.

Nyanga, in Xhosa, means ‘the moon’ and is one of the oldest black townships in Cape Town. It was established as a result of the migrant labor system. In the early fifties black migrants were forced to settle in Nyanga as Langa became too small. Nyanga is one of the poorest and most dangerous parts of Cape Town. Its unemployment is estimated at around 70% and HIV/AIDS is a huge community issue.

Nyanga is situated 26 kilometers from Cape Town using N2 road. The area is situated close to the Cape Town International Airport and next to the townships of Gugulethu and Crossroads.

Nyanga like other disadvantaged black townships joined a national call to protest against the ”pass laws” in 1960 and later the 1976 student uprisings against the use of Afrikaans as first language in schools. Nyanga became popular for its black on black faction fighting that was allegedly perpetrated by the corrupt police in the early eighties. The local authorities (izibonda) grouped themselves according to their background and used that as their criteria when allocating land. These cultural differences were allegedly used by the police to start up black on black faction fighting. They were infiltrated by the apartheid regime and as a result fought against each other, which led to emergence of the notorious group called “the witdoeke “ (the white scarfs).

In the early eighties the youth targeted heavy drinking and shebeens as obstacles to political change. They destroyed shebeens with petrol bombs and stones forcing many operators to close down. The police took a demolished building that had been a shebeen and developed it into to a police station to serve the area.