This thesis is a decolonial feasibility study on the National Department of
Housing’s (now National Department of Human Settlement) policy of
eradicating informal settlements by 2014. In this thesis I argue that the policy
intent of eradicating informal settlements by the proposed date of 2014 cannot
be feasible without transcending the structure that produce these informal
settlements in the first place. This is why even though we are towards the end
of 2014 there is not yet clear evidence that the informal settlements are being
eradicated or will be eradicated in the near future. In this dissertation, I argue
that informal settlements are a product of a global power structure of
coloniality (multiple forms of colonialisms that survive the demise of apartheid)
that produces inequalities among human beings including the habitat sphere.
I deploy the experience of Mshenguville informal settlement to demonstrate
that the experience of informal settlement is just but a marker or sign of
inequality among human beings in the age of Western-centred modernity.
Thus those in informal settlement are considered to exist on the darker side of
modernity as opposed to those in splashy suburb who experience the brighter
side of modernity