PREMIER RESORTS TO WORD-PLAY TO DEFEND FAKE ELECTION PROMISE TO DEVELOP AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN CAPE TOWN
5 February 2021
The response from the Western Cape Premier’s office defending its apparent unwillingness to integrate Cape Town through developing affordable housing in inner-city areas is reminiscent of apartheid spin-doctoring in the 1980s.
The province can’t come out directly and admit to having no plans to unstitch the Group Areas Act. Like the apartheid government in the 1980s it therefore seeks to position itself as willing to transform, but held back by reasons beyond its control. When it runs out of excuses, it hides behind semantics and lies.
Just before the 2019 election, then Western Cape Human Settlements MEC Bongani Madikizela told the Western Cape legislature of plans to develop 10 000 affordable homes in the Cape Town central business district and surrounding suburbs. Madikizela’s announcement was important because the DA-led province was under pressure due to not having instituted a single such project since the dawn of democracy.
I suspected at the time that Madikizela was lying, so about 18 months later I asked for a progress report, in a formal written question in the legislature. Had the land he’d referred to been transferred?
Madikizela, the Western Cape DA provincial leader and now MEC for Transport and Public Works, responded that I should address the question to his successor in the Human Settlements Portfolio, Tertuis Simmers. Simmers responded this week that no properties had been transferred to his department, and therefore no detail or progress could be provided.
I therefore released a statement earlier this week calling on the Premier to sanction Madikizela for lying to the House. “It is cruel for the DA to give false hope to families desperate for a solution to their housing needs. And it is a violation of the rules of the legislature for members to lie,” I said.
The response from the Premier’s office reported in the media today was disappointing.
Instead of reassuring Capetonians by revealing any plans to begin to integrate Cape Town, the Premier’s office said that as a former Mayoral Committee member in Cape Town, I should know better than to ask if property had been “transferred” instead of using the term, “released” – or perhaps, “secured”.
In any case, the Premier’s office said (ignoring Madikizela’s references to specific sites in the Cape Town CBD and surrounds), the Western Cape seriousness to tackle spatial redress was reflected in plans to develop the Conradie Hospital site, the Belhar CBD and Somerset Precinct.
But Conradie Hospital and Belhar are nowhere near the Cape Town CBD, and if the province has real plans to develop affordable housing in the Somerset Precinct why has this information not been released?
The next stage of their argument will no doubt be that the development of the Somerset Precinct is being held back by “squatters” – a similar argument to that used in the 1980s, when the development of Nyanga was held back by “squatters” living in Crossroads, hence the need to remove them to Khayelitsha. The then-government always had the best interests of people of colour in mind, it said.
I will not stop asking the questions. The level of inequality in the Western Cape and Cape Town is totally unjust and unsustainable. The Premier’s office would do well to take it seriously, stop playing word games and tell citizens in good faith what it is doing to effect spatial justice and distinguish itself from its apartheid ancestry.