GOOD Statement by Roscoe Palm,
GOOD City of Cape Town Councillor
1 November 2024
The City of Cape Town’s evictions of people living at the Castle of Good Hope follow a trend of undermining the dignity of the poor, the working class, and the unemployed.
These evictions, while technically legal, represent the latest assault on the dignity of the vulnerable in our city.
The GOOD Party acknowledges the City’s claim that people should be moved to more suitable locations. However, the City’s portrayal of itself as a victim of illegal occupation is misleading.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the City that relocated these people to the Castle site from a makeshift “concentration camp” for homeless individuals.
The Human Rights Commission ultimately ordered the closure of this camp due to the severe human rights abuses that occurred there—abuses that the City was responsible for by establishing and overseeing the site.
Today, we witnessed the wanton destruction of personal property belonging to those being evicted. The individuals affected by this eviction were then forcibly moved to so-called “Safe Spaces One and Two,” both of which are already overcrowded. To accommodate these latest victims of forced removals, people were further displaced from these so-called safe spaces.
This only demonstrates that the City has no comprehensive plan to address the underlying conditions that lead to homelessness, nor does it show any intention to improve the dire and, at times, corrupt conditions within certain NGO-managed shelters that the City funds and supports.
If the City of Cape Town is genuinely committed to being a caring city, it must offer more than a policy of rotating people through shelters and safe spaces.
A real solution to homelessness and dignity restoration is desperately needed.
This would include addressing the shortage of appropriate transitional housing, as well as psycho-social services to support people who find themselves unhoused in this merciless economy.
As long as the city treats this as a land issue and not a social issue, we will be locked in a perpetual cycle of violence inflicted on the poor.
Media enquiries:
Roscoe Palm, GOOD: City of Cape Town Councillor
Cell: 073 540 0634
Email: roscoe_palm@outlook.com
Samantha Jackson, GOOD: Media Manager
Cell: 083 5509875
Email: samantha@forgood.org.za