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Cape Town officers demolish homes at Maitland informal settlement

Published

City of Cape Town law enforcement officers demolished homes at the Gate 7 informal settlement on land owned by the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure. Residents say they will sleep outdoors again.

Residents settled at Gate 7 in July. They had left rented homes in Dunoon and Joe Slovo in Milnerton. Reports said they hoped to escape high rent and crime there.

Resident Lennox Shumani said people asked officials what to do. He said they were still organising zinc sheets to build houses when the demolitions happened.

Naeema Makarani-Hamid also lost her home. She said the mayor of Cape Town is breaking children down by demolishing the homes. Her children attend nearby schools in Kensington.

Key facts

Who
Lennox Shumani (resident who lost his home); Naeema Makarani-Hamid (resident whose home was destroyed); City of Cape Town (municipality whose law enforcement officers carried out the demolitions); Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (owner of the land)
What
Homes at the Gate 7 informal settlement in Maitland, on land owned by the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure, were demolished by City of Cape Town law enforcement. Residents, who settled there in July after leaving rented homes in Dunoon and Joe Slovo in Milnerton, say they will again sleep outdoors.
When
25 October 2026
Where
Maitland, Gate 7, Dunoon
Status
Reported

Elections Hot

What you need to know

Voting in the 2026 Local Government Elections is under way at 23,696 stations, and the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) reported a smooth start on 4 November. Stations opened at 7am and close at 9pm, and by 10am preliminary figures showed 3,523,691 voters had cast ballots.

There were problems: unused ballot papers were stolen from Mnyameni Secondary School near Durban, police opened a case, and the IEC relieved the station staff of duty. Some voters in Tshwane said they were turned away for wearing party shirts, but the IEC denied this and said only mayoral candidates' entourages were barred.

ANC chairperson Gwede Mantashe told members not to query the results or discredit the IEC, while the IEC said false online claims show routine procedures as fraud.

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US mid-terms Heating up

What you need to know

Democrats won back both the US House and Senate in the midterm elections held on 3 November, according to media projections. Exit polls showed voters were angry about high prices and the direction of the country, and rebuked President Donald Trump.

Before the vote, US forces struck targets on Qeshm Island in Iran, while Republicans struggled to defend the war against Iran on the campaign trail. Iranian officials said US voters rejected the war, and Tehran stayed on high alert for possible new US strikes.

Markets reacted, with the dollar hitting a one-month low and the rand firming to around R16.55, as analysts pointed to fears of gridlock in Washington.

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AI Cooling

What you need to know

Nvidia has told its cloud computing clients to sell at least 51% of their services to non-Chinese companies, according to five people with knowledge of the matter. Anthropic said it has committed to spend close to $900bn on AI infrastructure, and that its computing costs are rising faster than its revenues.

Elsewhere, reports from unnamed sources say OpenAI's latest funding round is falling short of expectations, and a judge let the NAACP pollution case against xAI proceed. In South Africa, the VAST AI investment scheme went offline on 30 October after withdrawals marked approved did not arrive, according to a news investigation.

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