The Intersections of Past and Present Policies in Producing and Perpetuating Processes of Division in Cape Town

South Africa still shows signs of a dual economy characterised by one of theworld’s highest rates of inequality.Cape Town is regarded as one of the most unequal cities—if not the most—in the world. Colonialism, apartheid, and Cape Town’s neoliberal stance have produced exceptional inequality. How have past and present policies and predispositions shaped Cape Town’s outlook, particularly in the two low-income communities of Gugulethu and Khayelitsha? Drawing on a review of the literature and empirical data, the paper finds that Cape Town continues to be marked by high rates of inequality, massive investments in the core and wealth concentrated in the CBD and formerly White areas under theGroup AreasAct.Areas formerly designated for Black African people remain largely poverty-stricken with unimpressive basic service delivery records. In these glaring inequalities, service delivery protests have erupted. The paper employs the Framing Processes Theory to analyse activists’ understandings of their situations and protests. While scholars have stressed the ‘issue-based’ and ‘localised’ nature of these protests, they have not adequately interrogated the ways in which protesters frame their struggles in relation to the city. The paper argues that although these protests are ‘issue-based’ and ‘localised’, protesters do not understand their struggles as isolated from developments in the rest of the city. This points to a rising consciousness which is necessary to broad economic and political challenges in the future.