For a Critical Logistics of Eviction: Producing Property Through Mobility in Cape Town

Abstract

Understanding eviction as a positioning of bodies and loss in a property relation, I argue a critical logistical reading may offer a means of describing the capacity to evict within the economic, racial, reproductive, and political configurations that drive the decisions and motives for eviction. With a focus on the Cape Town metropolitan area, I trace one route through the flows conceptualised in eviction practices in urban informal settlements in the Western Cape and their material organisation. I follow preparations from flow charts to demolition, through in-depth interviews with individuals responsible for the planning and physical conduct of forced evictions, security facility visits, and analysis of documents and news reports. Adding to existing dialogues on the failure of housing delivery in South Africa, I describe “eviction-logistics” as a mechanism for organising loss and an additional point of intervention for housing and land justice.