Notes From The Western Cape Provincial Parliament

As a former Mayoral Committee Member for Transport and Urban Settlements under Aunty Pat, I oversaw housing provision for the vulnerable from January 2017 til I resigned from the DA in November 2018. For the first time in 18 years, we managed to exceed our yearly targets, marking a shift in the pace of change in the City of Cape Town.

The news that the Bromwell eviction case is still being litigated before the Western Cape High Court is distressing. In 2016 we engaged with the Bromwell families who were facing eviction and were looking to the City of Cape Town to provide emergency housing.

Unfortunately, the city had not developed or planned any emergency or transitional housing in the inner city, at the time, and we could only offer emergency housing in the very isolated and unsuitable Wolwerivier. But, by mid-2017 I had identified 5 inner-city sites, public land in the custody of the City, that could be developed for affordable housing as well as a Salt River building that could be developed for transitional or emergency housing.

These projects could have been well underway under construction by now, or in the case of the transitional housing, already developed. But Dan Plato inexplicably cancelled them when he became Mayor and so the sites continue to lie vacant and derelict and people continue to be denied well-located affordable housing with no prospects of inner-city housing being developed.

What this tells me is that Mayor Plato – and those currently heading Human Settlements in the City – are unconcerned by the needs of Cape Town’s residents. Furthermore, it tells me that the city remains uncommitted to implementing housing and spatial justice, despite the words they utter every election cycle.

If we are going to fight segregation, then we have to rectify this issue – despite complacent mayors and corporate big shots.