The Victoria Mxenge Housing Project: Women building communities through social activism and informal learning

At the beginning of South Africa’s democratic change in 1994, the Victoria Mxenge Housing Project was founded by a group of 12 women who lived in shacks on the barren outskirts of Cape Town. These women had come from rural areas and were poor, vulnerable and semi-literate. Yet they learned how to build, negotiate with the government and NGOs, architects and building experts, and form alliances with homeless social movements locally and internationally. The desolate piece of land they occupied is now a thriving, sustainable community of more than 5 000 houses.

Over a period of 10 years Salma Ismail tracked the history of the Victoria Mxenge Housing Project, from its start as a development organisation to its evolution into a social movement and then as a service provider.

Through the stories of these women, she describes the choices a social movement made when caught up in the struggle to mobilise for housing and become service providers in a context in which the state did not live up to its social responsibilities. The text weaves together perspectives on the usefulness and limitations of Popular Education, the value of local and traditional knowledge, and of experiential learning and learning in an informal context. This book taps into the growing international interest in ‘citizen learning’ in the context of social movements.