Highway ‘anti-crime’ wall to conceal Cape Town’s poor receives pushback‘APARTHEID WALL’: Critics said the wall would not stop crime, and that it aimed to hide the poor and the fact that there is a privileged and privilege-deprived Cape TownAFP, CAPE TOWNCape Town’s plans to build a wall to prevent attacks on the airport highway have divided South Africa’s tourist hotspot, with critics calling it an apartheid throwback to hide poverty. “Literally hundreds of thousands of people a day use that road, and many of them feel unsafe,” Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said, adding that most were local commuters. Thirty years after the end of white-minority rule, disparities between Cape Town’s formerly segregated white and black areas are stark, with the city’s DA authorities accused of not doing enough tackle the imbalance. Anger over the N2 wall dominated the Cape Town Pride mardi gras this month where activists called on the city to address its deepening housing crisis instead. “They are trying to build a wall behind which they are trying to hide the poor,” former anti-apartheid activist and cleric Allan Boesak said, calling it an “apartheid wall.”“They are trying to hide the fact that there is indeed a black Cape Town and a white Cape Town — a privileged Cape Town and a privileged-deprived Cape Town,” he said.

Source: Taipei Times March 06, 2026 17:13 UTC