Marius Pieterse

The book Urban Politics of Human Rights edited by Janne E Nijman, Barbara Oomen, Elif Durmus, Sarah Miellet and Lisa Roodenburg has just been published by Routledge and is available open access here. The book considers how human rights are shaped in particular urban political climates. My chapter, “Resisting Marginalisation in the World Class City: Eking Out a Right to Public Presence in the City of Cape Town”, traces the juridical evolution of a right to public presence in judgments of the Cape High Court. Looking at the intersection between party-politics and neo-liberal forces in the City of Cape Town, I argue that this urban right has had its genesis in a political environment hostile to human rights, which shows that peculiarly local understandings of human rights do not depend in the first instance on a supportive local government.