Street Life in Khayelitsha

Election posters in Khayelitsha for the Official Opposition, the Democratic Alliance, before National Elections April 2009. Established in 1985 by the apartheid regime to settle the influx of Black Africans, mainly from the Xhosa communities of the Eastern Cape who had come to Cape Town in search of work, the township has grown immensely. With a population of between 1.5 to 2 million, it is arguably the largest township in Africa. It has though been largely upstaged by Soweto in Guateng Province. Khayelitsha is very young demographically with 40% of its population under the age of 19. Since the ANC came to power in 1994 a lot of improvements have been attempted in the township. New brick housing and schools are evident and the crime rate has fallen drastically in the past 3 years. Serious problems though persist. It is estimated that one third of its population is HIV positive and figures from local NGO's show that nearly 1 in 3 children suffer some form of sexual abuse by the time they are 18.