GOOD Speech by Axolile Notywala
GOOD City of Cape Town Councillor
21 August 2025
*Note to editor: This speech was delivered during today’s council meeting
Speaker, make no mistake, the GOOD Party has the most progressive agenda in this council on land and housing. This land the Mayor spoke about was announced for social housing in 2017. Malusi Booi held a ceremony for this land and announced its release for social housing in 2022. Now, in 2025, it is being released again for ‘mixed development’.
We cannot, in good conscience, support selling land to the private sector with no guarantees for affordable housing while Cape Town faces a deepening housing crisis.
The lack of an affordable housing policy, and the lack of urgency in developing one, tells us that this DA-led City of Cape Town is comfortable with Spatial Apartheid. It tells us the DA does not see the urgency to dismantle it and is okay with the daily violence that comes with it.
On 01 August 2025, the City Manager, commemorating Women’s Month, sent us a message about the injustices of Apartheid laws. Strange that he remembers the past injustices, but says nothing about the daily violence of Spatial Apartheid today in Cape Town, particularly towards women.
Spatial Apartheid is violent to everyone, but women bear the brunt. The DA may not have arrested a woman in Sea Point in 2019 for taking a selfie while Black, but it created the conditions for her arrest by maintaining Spatial Apartheid. The DA may not have killed Sinoxolo Mafevuka in a shared toilet 200 meters away from her home in 2016 in Khayelitsha, but it created the conditions for her brutal murder by maintaining Spatial Apartheid.
And after 20 years of DA governance, we have seen no single affordable housing built in the Cape Town CBD. Speaker, ndithe zero, niks, iqanda, dololo affordable housing in the 20 years siphethwe yi DA kweliKapa.
Stop selling land to the private sector without a progressive, affordable housing policy. Stop selling land to the private sector without a progressive inclusionary housing policy.
Speaker, no person in their right conscience should support decisions of a party that is comfortable with Spatial Apartheid and the violence that comes with it.
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