History Department
University of the Western Cape
The last time I saw Jacques Depelchin I drove him (together with Ibrahim Abdullah) around the townships of Cape Town. We drove along a road bordered by shacks in Khayelitsha and Jacques commented "this is worse than anywhere I have seen in Africa." Some of those shacks were the so-called QQ section of Khayelitsha which, along with a number of areas in the Cape Town metropolis this last winter, rose in revolt at the lack of delivery of services and housing, putting up barricades of burning tyres to close the road that Jacques and I had driven on, and throwing their garbage across the road.
