I can't breathe! Housing, masculinities and violence in Cape Town, South Africa

This chapter explores how a group of men living in South Africa’s first state-led transitional housing project, Pickwick Transitional Housing, navigate the sensory and political constraints of everyday life. Drawing on in-depth interviews, the chapter conceptualises transitional housing as a “chokehold,” which is a state of suspended transformation that restricts the men’s ability to breathe, think, and act. Though Pickwick is an undeniable material improvement from their previous informal settlement lives, the constrained conditions, lack of privacy, and sensory overload reproduce violence and insecurity in both public and domestic space. Focusing on the phrase “I can’t breathe,” the chapter critically examines the sensory dimensions of housing injustice and how experiences of overcrowding, noise, and psychological distress shape and are shaped by racialised and gendered performances of power. Through situating everyday experiences within broader political and historical frameworks, the chapter demonstrates how the post-apartheid state’s vision of homemaking for marginalised communities can generate contradictory outcomes, as transformation remains a process perpetually deferred. It argues that transformation must function beyond material provision; it must enable residents to reclaim sensory and political space, to breathe, to be heard, and to make claims towards their own futures.