Gerald Estates gives ex-squatters decent homes

Like all urban areas the world over, Francistown had become a magnet to rural immigrants because it offered employment and informal sector opportunities and therefore a better life for the former rural dweller. The slow process of land allocation as well as lack of gainful employment and financial resources among the urban immigrants contributed to the mushrooming of slums and squatter settlements. Prospective land seekers, limited by poverty and other factors, could not build decent homes.

With substandard and uninhabitable homes, squatter settlements were not only unsightly but were regarded as breeding grounds for all manner of crime and disease. One of the characteristics of slums, these vivid expressions of poverty, is social disorganisation.