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Kenny Tokwe, a community leader, leans against the concrete wall which separates the community of Imizamo Yethu from Hout Bay. Nowhere else in Cape Town are the haves and the have nots so closely positioned to one another as they are here, and the relationship between them, especially along this wall, seems to range from acrimonious to barely tolerable.
It seems that few people, on either side, would say they choose to live here; the shack dwellers don't have jobs, money, or indoor toilets. The house owners have built gigantic fences around their properties which look like palisades, and live in a siege-like state of constant vigilance. It's a stalemate which leaves both sides fuming, and the government seems ill-equipped to provide alternatives.
Kenny's position as community leader is tenuous - his home was burned down, and his life threatened, for negotiating "too leniently" with the city after a large fire - but he remains ever cheerful, breaking into a large smile at the slightest provocation. On the subject of the fence, he pauses for a moment, as if it's a subject which doesn't come up too often. Perhaps it's just too obvious of a subject. " Yeah, this fence is kind of irritating to people. We need more land. We are like rats in a small cage. For the rats to have a space they normally kill each other to create a space."