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Housing disparate people from numerous places, who spoke various languages and possessed a diverse range of social and cultural experiences, Sada and Ilinge were never the culturally-homogenous places envisaged in the government’s rhetoric of ethnic ‘homelands’. This chapter explores the process of settlement and the making of place in Sada and Ilinge, as people established themselves, with more or less success, in the new townships. It examines some of the main fault lines of social and cultural difference described by the townships’ residents and considers the emergence of forms of kinship and ‘community’: formal social institutions, modes of sociability and patterns of association. Among these dynamics, the chapter explores the initiatives of activists banished to Sada and Ilinge, as they sought to re-establish underground networks and to politicise local people. Social distinctions between people who came to the townships from a range of different backgrounds were modified and challenged as individuals and households sought to establish themselves in new settings. The new social spaces that were formed in Sada and Ilinge were made amid an immediate context of geographic isolation and economic deprivation, which conditioned a heavy reliance on migrant remittances and demanded that linkages with urban worlds and livelihoods be nurtured.