GOOD Speech by Axolile Notywala
GOOD City of Cape Town Councillor
22 August 2024
Note to editor: This is the maiden speech of GOOD Councillor in the City of Cape Town, Axolile Notywala, delivered during today’s sitting on the proposed disposal of the Woodstock Hospital.
Speaker, I RISE today with the GOOD councillors to oppose and reject this item. I also want to call on all the GOOD people of Cape Town, and all councillors in this meeting, to RISE against spatial apartheid and stop the suffering in Cape Town.
We are opposed to any sale of land that will lead to more homelessness and landlessness and that will violently displace people and relegate them to the peripheries. We say LAND FOR PEOPLE, NOT FOR PROFIT.
We will not support a motion that will take us back to the days of the Group Areas Act in Cape Town. The Act was a racist law of separate development that relegated, violently so, primarily Black and Coloured people to the now gang and extortion ridden townships such as Khayelitsha, Manenberg, Crossroads and Mitchells Plain.
Cape Town’s spatial Apartheid is violent to many Black and Coloured people today. The sale of land in Cape Town perpetuates spatial Apartheid.
Today we are told that we have moved on, and that Cape Town is an inclusive and caring City. The Mayor is asking that councillors here must support this item with no information or care about what will happen to the 864 individuals mentioned in it who have lived there for 7 years, should the land be sold to a private developer. These are 864 human beings.
These are mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, and children who live there. Surely, we must care. These are families. Think of your own. Think about selling your home to the highest bidder while your family still lives in it.
As the GOOD Party we are not just opposing the Mayor’s recommendation. But we ask the Mayor to withdraw, and instead implement the recommendations from the City’s own consultants in the Stedone report of 2019.
The report concluded that the property can be developed into Social Housing, with the possibility of Community Residential Units and transitional housing with a combined yield of 845 units which would absorb the existing occupants and accommodate approximately 1900 people at an estimated cost of R359 million.
Millions of rands were paid to these consultants. We are told this is a well-run City. Ignoring the recommendations from the Stedone report amounts to a reckless waste of taxpayers’ money.
Media Enquiries:
Axolile Notywala, GOOD City of Cape Town Councillor
Cell: 074 386 1584
Email: Axolile.Notywala@capetown.gov.za
Janke Tolmay, GOOD: Media Manager
Cell: 073 367 1223
Email: janke@forgood.org.za