Cape Town Fringe, Manenberg Avenue Is Where It’s At is not a detached document of a place viewed from a distance. It emerges from prolonged presence, listening and return. The work reflects an engagement with lives shaped by forced removals, structural violence and the everyday negotiations of survival in Manenberg.

The voices that run through this project are not explanatory captions but testimonies. Raw, unfiltered and often contradictory, they speak of labour and retrenchment, housing and eviction, faith and despair, motherhood and loss, loyalty and betrayal. Through these voices the work reveals the long afterlife of apartheid and the slow violence of its spatial legacy.

Poverty, gang culture and fear appear not as isolated incidents but as conditions produced over decades of displacement and marginalisation. Within this environment the ordinary acts of daily life carry risk. Going to work, walking through a street or sending a child to school can become acts shaped by uncertainty and vigilance.

Working in Manenberg

David Lurie began working in Manenberg at the end of 2001. The project was initially conceived as a continuation of Life in the Liberated Zone, but it quickly developed its own urgency and direction. Over roughly eighteen months he spent extended periods in and around Manenberg Avenue, photographing and engaging with residents who welcomed him into their homes and everyday routines.

What emerged from this sustained presence was not a single narrative but an accumulation of stories, gestures and encounters. The work grows from proximity rather than observation, shaped by relationships formed over time rather than brief visits.

Photography and Testimony

The photographs are inseparable from the spoken words that accompany them. Image and testimony operate together, revealing how history embeds itself within bodies, homes and social relationships. The accounts of forced removals from Cape Town and the relocation to Manenberg expose the rupture of communities and the creation of environments many residents describe as “concentration camps”.

These histories illuminate how displacement fractured social structures and left neighbourhoods vulnerable to violence. Yet the work refuses to reduce its subjects to victims alone. Moments of humour, resilience and moral complexity run through the testimonies, revealing lives that insist on being recognised beyond stereotypes.

“To understand Manenberg one must listen as much as look, because the stories carried by its residents reveal the deeper histories embedded in the place.”

Beyond the Narrative of Crime

Lurie does not present Manenberg as an isolated anomaly. Instead he situates it within a broader South African reality shaped by policy decisions, neglect and unfulfilled political promises. The testimonies challenge simplified narratives of crime and culpability, insisting on work, dignity and opportunity as the foundations for meaningful change.

As several voices emphasise, employment is not only a matter of economic survival but also of safety, self-worth and social cohesion. Without it, communities remain vulnerable to cycles of instability that extend far beyond the neighbourhood itself.

Looking and Listening

Cape Town Fringe, Manenberg Avenue Is Where It’s At operates simultaneously as a photographic essay and as a historical record. The project asks viewers to sit with discomfort, to confront the continuity between past and present and to acknowledge lives too often reduced to statistics or headlines.

Grounded in proximity and responsibility, the work insists that witnessing requires more than observation alone. To look is not enough. One must also listen.