How South African townships reflect the nation's urban reality

Townships like Soweto, Umlazi and Khayelitsha reflect South Africa’s urban reality in ways that city skylines cannot. 

“While each carries the weight of inequality and historic disadvantage, they are also centres of growth, resilience and entrepreneurship,” says Hayley Ivins-Downes, managing real estate executive at Lightstone and director at Prop Data.

“Soweto’s scale and maturity give it an edge in income and property value, but Khayelitsha’s rapid growth highlights the magnetic pull of the Western Cape. Understanding these dynamics is critical because the future of South Africa’s property market is as much about our townships as it is about our cities,” Ivins-Downes says.  

Lightstone, which provides comprehensive data, analytics and systems on property, automotive and business assets, says these sprawling communities are home to significant portions of the urban population, and theirs are the untold stories frequently omitted from mainstream property narratives.

It used the three provinces with the highest GDP and then identified the largest cities in each before selecting the most populous township in each. Data was then examined to compare the townships' population size, household income, property values, and property transfer activity.

Soweto, near Johannesburg, is South Africa’s most iconic township and is home to around 1.5 million people. Its roots can be traced back to the early 1900s before being formally named as South Western Township in 1963, and it’s known today for its vibrant cultural life and thriving tourism industry.

Last week, this publication reported that South Africa’s next wave of affordable housing delivery will be driven by township landlords and small-scale developers. 

Nedbank Corporate and Investment Banking (Nedbank CIB) said it will once again partner with International Housing Solutions (IHS) at The 17th IHS Affordable Housing Conference, that took place on Wednesday in Johannesburg brought together stakeholders across the public and private sectors to work together to reduce the housing backlog by improving township planning approval turnaround times, ensuring dependable local infrastructure, and backing investable, well-located projects.

Umlazi, located in Durban, has around 486 000 residents and features a mix of urban development and poverty. Umlazi was created in the 1960s and is Durban’s largest township.

Khayelitsha, on Cape Town’s outskirts, is one of the fastest-growing townships and has around 520 000 residents. The township is characterised by informal housing and strong grassroots activism, and it’s important to bear in mind that Khayelitsha is the youngest of the three townships, founded only in the mid-1980s as an apartheid-era relocation zone.

The company said all three reflect South Africa’s complex socio-economic legacy, marked by inequality, resilience, and community spirit. It said despite challenges like unemployment and crime, these townships are hubs of innovation, culture, and emerging entrepreneurship, and are playing an important role in the country’s evolving urban landscape.

According to Lightstone’s estimates, Umlazi’s adult population grew by 10% over the last ten years, behind Soweto at 25% and well behind Khayelitsha at 40%, which probably reflects the ongoing inward migration into the Western Cape from other provinces.

Apart from being the oldest township with the largest population, Soweto is also the wealthiest of the three townships when it comes to household income. Khayelitsha is the youngest and the poorest.

More than 20% of Soweto’s households have income exceeding R13 000 a month, similar to Umlazi but significantly in excess of Khayelitsha. Soweto has just more than 20% of households earning less than R6 500 a month, compared to just under 60% in Khayelitsha and around 45% in Umlazi 

Comparing these townships to their nearby cities, as anticipated, showed that the cities are significantly wealthier. For example, around 25% of Soweto’s residents earn more than R13 000 a month, while in Johannesburg the figure is more than 70%.

But both Soweto and Johannesburg record equally small amounts of households earning less than R3 250 a month.

The average property values mirror, unsurprisingly, household income patterns. Soweto (R585 000) and Umlazi (R560 000) are relatively close, while Khayelitsha’s average property value trails at R350 000.

The ratio of households to formal deeds registered property is more favourable in Soweto (2.25:1) than in Khayelitsha (3.3:1) and Umlazi (3.2:1). 

The data also demonstrated the difference in property values. The majority of homes in Khayelitsha are valued at between R200 000 and R400 000, while the majority in Soweto are valued between R400 000 and R700 000 and between R400 000 and R600 000 in Umlazi.

Soweto has 1 600 properties valued at more than R1m, while Khayelitsha has none.

Interestingly, the average price of a property in Johannesburg is three times the average in Soweto, while Durban’s average property price is double that of Umlazi, and the gap between Cape Town and Khayelitsha is much more pronounced at seven times.

Lightstone said this is not surprising as Khayelitsha is the poorest of the three townships, and property prices in Cape Town have been surging in recent years as the Western Cape attracts people from other provinces.

Property transfers in both Soweto and Umlazi were said to have been trending downwards over the past decade, despite the occasional rally.

However, transfers in Khayelitsha were on the increase from 2018 to 2022, before falling each year since then. Despite the trend, though, Soweto still accounts for most transfers by some distance.

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