This paper investigates land occupation on the urban peripheries of Cape Town and the use of de facto
land rights to sustain survival strategies and to make broader claims for accessing the state and accessing
the city. Using extensive qualitative research in Cape Town with the Ithemba farmers, I investigate the
politics of claims-making among a group of ‘squatting farmers’ who have established their access to
land owned by the state and explore their insurgent practices and livelihoods. In doing so, I examine the
disconnect between policies and lives on the ground indicating desires for equitable and integrated
human settlements supporting peoples’ hybrid livelihood strategies and contesting ongoing experiences
of social and spatial exclusion post-apartheid. This work is situated within broader discussions of the
peripheries as sites of contestation and agency and brings the land question into conversation with
contemporary processes of urbanization and unemployment in South Africa.