Tommy Trenchard/Panos Pictures

A placard reading 'Please do not uproot us again' stands on a window sill in Cissie Gool House, an abandoned hospital that now houses some 1,000 people. Many of those living there now were initially uprooted during South Africa's apartheid years, when non-white residents were forcibly removed from large parts of central Cape Town. Others were made homeless more recently during ongoing gentrification of inner city areas.

Since 2017, the Reclaim the City movement has been supporting the occupation of various abandoned buildings in central Cape Town in order to protest against gentrification and the lack of affordable housing near the city centre, and to provide a refuge for those being evicted from their homes. During the apartheid era non-white residents were forcibly removed from much of central Cape Town. Nearly three decades later the city remains chronically divided along ethnic and socio-economic lines, while South Africa remains the world's most unequal country, according to the World Bank.