Spotlight on ‘apartheid’ city planning

Premier Helen Zille has failed in her “obligation to reverse apartheid city planning”, according to Reclaim the City lobby group.

Cape Town -

Premier Helen Zille has failed in her “obligation to reverse apartheid city planning”, according to Reclaim the City lobby group, which has vowed it will not stop with the Tafelberg land and will turn its attention now to three other city sites.

It has in its sights the Helen Bowden Nurses Home near the Cape Town Stadium, Top Yard near Parliament and the Alfred Street Complex in Green Point, all of which the group wants to see made available for affordable housing.

This comes after the group this week went to court to halt the planned sale of land on which the Tafelberg Remedial School in Sea Point stands.

The The Phyllis Jowell Jewish Day School had offered R135 million for the property, but the Western Cape High Court agreed on Thursday the provincial government should conduct a 21-day public participation process on how the land should be used.

The province will also have to readvertise the Tafelberg sale within 10 days of the court ruling.

On Friday, Reclaim the City repeated its condemnation of the provincial government’s plans to sell this and other prime land in and around central Cape Town to private developers.

The group was launched in February to oppose the sale of the four sites. Last month it launched legal opposition with the help of non-profit Ndifuna Ukwazi Law Centre.

Reclaim the City spokesman Kopano Maroga said yesterday the court victory “extends well beyond the campaign for the development of affordable housing on Tafelberg in particular”.

He said the 21-day objection period had the potential to set a precedent “for genuine public participation in decisions about the disposal and use of state land”.

“This process must be closely monitored to ensure that the provincial cabinet and the premier gives due weight to the voices of ordinary people... before deciding whether or not to sell Tafelberg,” Maroga said.

The other three sites up for “disposal” were “key to (the) government fulfilling its obligation to reverse apartheid city planning”.

“The province cannot sell these sites to generate cash flow. State land is a finite resource with immense social value that cannot be measured in monetary terms.

“The province must use the sites to develop affordable housing and to bring working-class black and coloured people back into the inner city from where they were excluded during apartheid and from where they are currently being priced out,” Maroga said.

He said the Tafelberg case would be a test for the government and “for all of us to prove that public participation can influence decisions about the future and use of public land”.

Zille said in her weekly newsletter officials were “committed to ensuring that anyone who seeks an opportunity for comment should be able to have it taken into account”.

Zille said the provincial government would then make a “rational decision about how best to utilise its assets to the best advantage of citizens”.

According to the ruling, the provincial government has a month to decide whether to pursue the Tafelberg sale. Zille said the province sold the Tafelberg “building and land for revamping as an independent school”.

Addressing the group’s concerns, Zille saidthe provincial government had last year delivered “nearly 18 000 housing opportunities”.

She did not say where the houses were situated.

“We understand the challenges of overcoming the legacy of apartheid spatial planning in Cape Town. It is a priority for us to redress this,” Zille added.

The Transport and Public Works department said “no decision has been taken” in relation to the three contested sites advertised for investors.

“Claims that the provincial government wants to sell or dispose of these sites and that they are ‘in the pipeline for disposal’ are false,” it said.

yazeed.kamaldien@inl.co.za

Saturday Argus