Statement by Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General and Member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament
15 July 2021
The GOOD Party enthusiastically welcomes news that SABC’s Rocklands Villas property in Sea Point will not be auctioned off to the highest bidder but used, instead, for affordable housing.
The decision by the Housing Development Agency to purchase the building for public and affordable housing, stopping its imminent auction, is a major break-through for inner-city affordable housing.
It is among the founding principles of the GOOD Party that public land must be used for public good.
In 27 years of democracy not a single affordable housing unit has been built by the Western Cape Province or City of Cape Town in the inner city. Instead, all new affordable housing developments have been built on the outskirts of the City, entrenching the apartheid era spatial plan and its Group Areas Act.
If the Western Cape Government could somehow be persuaded to drop its court appeal and allow the old Tafelberg School site to be used for affordable housing, the two Sea Point properties will provide a unique opportunity for a precinct based design for integrating affordable housing into a well-established neighbourhood.
Today’s development is truly ground-breaking. We call on the Premier to honour his commitment to settle the Tafelberg School litigation and to embrace the idea of a design-led affordable housing project anchored by the School and the SABC-flats.
GOOD’s position on public property, land and buildings, is that it is in the custody of the state on behalf of the people of this country. No government, or government entity, should be disposing of well-located properties when there is an urgent need to address the housing crisis.
The SABC should never have been in a position to lawfully sell off its property. It is a state-owned entity, and property it holds is owned by the people of this country. That the building was registered in the name of the SABC is an accident of history.
We call on the Western Cape Government to rise to the occasion and embrace the opportunity today’s events present.