For more than a decade, Axolile Notywala has worked alongside fellow organizers and activists in Khayelitsha, Cape Town to tackle infrastructure failures facing Black communities living in that township and its adjacent informal settlements. These failures grow out of the legacy of apartheid that deprived Black people and other communities of color of public infrastructure.

The promise of transformation that came with the fall of apartheid and the 1994 emergence of a full franchise for all South Africans have fallen short. Today, millions of South Africans are navigating worsening economic circumstances. Across the country, we are witnessing growing political disaffection. And in the vacuum of transformational leadership left by the contemporary political class, xenophobic talking points are emerging as a rallying call for various political parties.

Cape Town’s ongoing challenges are emblematic of the rest of South Africa. Notably, communities remain fractured—the outcome of the apartheid legacy that forced communities of color to live apart from each other, limiting their capacity to build power together. Notywala believes that transformation requires a movement that transcends these divides and builds solidarity across communities, and from the ground up. Drawing on his previous experience, he is working to build the Movement for Collective Action and Racial Equity (Movement for CARE), which particularly seeks to bridge the long-standing divide between Black communities and Coloured (largely multiracial) communities. As Notywala observes in the Q&A below, given that these communities are marginalized in similar ways, they stand to gain political ground when in solidarity. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.