Mona Hakimi

In 2010, I was an Honours student in Social Anthropology pursuing and engaging with socially responsive research. I conducted ethnographic research on the Group Areas Act (1950) and the Restitution of Land Rights Act (1994) and their effects on ‘community’ with former/future residents of Protea Village, an area of forced removal in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. My thesis, completed in 2010, was based on striking moments from three field sites where notions and acts of ‘community’ were active: at the High Court, in the home of an elderly land claimant, and at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Protea. The diversity of experiences and views of ‘community’ in these sites pointed towards the complexities of 'community' at work among people affected by the Protea Village legacy.