Drawn by South African political cartoonists the Trantraal brothers and
Ashley Marais, Crossroads: I Live Where I Like is a graphic nonfiction
history of women-led movements at the forefront of the struggle for
land, housing, water, education, and safety in Cape Town over half a
century. Drawing on over sixty life narratives, it tells the story of
women who built and defended Crossroads, the only informal settlement
that successfully resisted the apartheid bulldozers in Cape Town. The
story follows women's organized resistance from the peak of apartheid in
the 1970s to ongoing struggles for decent shelter today. Importantly,
this account was workshopped with contemporary housing activists and
women's collectives who chose the most urgent and ongoing themes they
felt spoke to and clarified challenges against segregation, racism,
violence, and patriarchy standing between the legacy of the colonial and
apartheid past and a future of freedom still being fought for.
Presenting dramatic visual representations of many personalities and
moments in the daily life of this township, the book presents a
thoughtful and thorough chronology, using archival newspapers, posters,
photography, pamphlets, and newsletters to further illustrate the
significance of the struggles at Crossroads for the rest of the city and
beyond. This collaboration has produced a beautiful, captivating,
accessible, forgotten, and in many ways uncomfortable history of Cape
Town that has yet to be acknowledged.
Crossroads: I Live Where I Like raises questions critical to the
reproduction of segregation and to gender and generational dynamics of
collective organizing, to ongoing anticolonial struggles and struggles
for the commons, and to new approaches to social history and creative
approaches to activist archives.
