Tommy Trenchard/Panos Pictures

Community leader Shiela Madikane uses a battery powered light to read through the agenda during a meeting at Ahmed Kathrada House, an abandoned nursing home in central Cape Town that has been occupied by a community of several hundred evictees and housing activists for the past five years. The building's electricity supply was cut off by the city after the beginning of the occupation.

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.