The first sign that you're approaching Freedom Park are the GAA jerseys on the local kids. A clutch of pre-schoolers in ill-fitting Donegal tops scamper around the entrance to the site, writes Joe Humphreysin Tafelsig
Inside, the flags of Kilkenny, Clare and a host of other counties rise above the scaffolding.
Accents from across Ireland can be heard above the din of forklift trucks and supply vans.
A few days ago, this was little more than a patch of grassland in Tafelsig, Mitchells Plain about 20km from Cape Town.
By Saturday, an expected 200 homes will be standing here, all built by volunteers who have dug deep - literally in some cases - to help families in a faraway land.
"I have never seen an example of active citizenship like this," said Paddy Maguinness, worldwide chief executive of the Niall Mellon Township Trust (NMTT).
"You can see the pride that people have - coming from Ireland to help others. This can only be a good experience for a nation like ours."
More than 1,350 people have volunteered for the week-long programme, having fundraised for the trip from an estimated 700 towns and villages across Ireland.
"People's lives are changed when they see poverty up-close," said Niall Mellon, the founder of the charity, which operates the volunteer programme as part of an all-year-round house-building operation based in South Africa.
The Dublin businessman and philanthropist established the organisation in 2003 after seeing the poverty in a township near a home belonging to him in Cape Town.
He said the volunteer programme delivered only a fraction of the 5,000 houses which NMTT planned to build in South Africa this year "but it delivers money for another 3,500 houses."
Many of the volunteers raised sums in excess of the €4,000 required for participation.
Brendan Healy, group chief information officer at Irish Life and Permanent, gained sponsorship of nearly €50,000.
Another volunteer - an elderly developer - came forward with a private donation of €700,000.
Not that money buys you privilege on the site. "This is the ultimate meritocracy," said a dust-covered John Healy, the recently retired chief executive of Atlantic Philanthropies. "The people who count here are not the guys who ran big companies, with big budgets. The block-layers, the carpenters, the tradesmen - they are the elite here."
Some builders had a lucky escape yesterday when a six-metre wall - due to be painted with a Nelson Mandela mural - came tumbling down, missing them by inches.
"There are a few shaky people around but we just have to drive it forward," said Dominic Loughran, a Belfast-born gardener who is in charge of the landscaping project.
Some people were blaming the accident on shoddy workmanship carried out by a South African contractor.
Others were blaming the heavy winds that battered the site on Sunday night. But Peter Donegan, from Ballyboughal, north Dublin, had his own theory. He said he was on scaffolding behind the wall, levelling off the top of it with some stones, when he felt the ground move.
"I threw a bit of extra stone - about the size of my fist - and the next minute it started to give," he said.
"It was like that Monty Python scene where the guy explodes after the extra mint." Mr Maguinness, who has taken leave of absence as deputy chief executive of Concern to work for NMTT, said he saw potential to expand the charity into other African countries, citing Tanzania as one possibility.
The charity has applied for €5 million in funding from Irish Aid, the Government's overseas aid wing, to support the expansion.