Contested Urban Commons: Lived Realities From Cape Town, South Africa

Natural resources represent important ‘commons’ for resident urban commoners. Where communities need to practice both consumptive and non-consumptive use of natural resources in the process of commoning, this can generate contestation, in particular between the practitioners and conservation officials if there is disagreement about how nature should be consumed. Such contestation is likely to be high when this concerns limited resources within geographic confines of a city with a political history of socio-economic exclusionary practices of the poor. Using a relational approach to human and non-human interactions, this article uses three nature reserves and a conservation area in the City of Cape Town, South Africa, where surrounding communities use resources to graze livestock, source firewood, harvest medicinal plants, harvest sand, practice cultural rituals and in some instances occupy nature reserve/conservation area land. Although most of these activities are deemed illegal, there are multiple ways in which township dwellers provide for themselves despite a system that continues to separate humans from non-human nature. We observe that rather than openly resisting exclusionary enclosure, Cape Town’s marginalised communities find ways of operating outside the impositions of the current management system. The social, economic and political dynamics require some kind of compromise between the user communities and managers if sustainable use practices are to be achieved for mutual positive outcomes going forward.