In Cape
Town numerous development battles are being fought as a result of the
city’s red-carpet approach to developers: A monster
60m-high-rise opposite Bo-Kaap; shopping
mall in Constantia; Maiden’s
Cove, Philippi
Horticultural Area (the PHA has been the focus of controversy
since 2012), etc.
Constantia residents are objecting to
the Hadjie Abdullah Solomon Family Trust’s development of the family’s “stolen”
land on Kendal, Spaanschemat and Ladies Mile Roads for a Shoprite Checkers mall. They responded to objections with the statement
“we have the right to develop our land” and invoked the ghost of apartheid
under which their grandfather suffered.
In their belief their “rights” to
develop are absolute, they invoke the manipulative, but irrelevant, image of
the “pain and suffering” of their grandfather.
These disputes are about responsible,
appropriate and sustainable spatial planning and land management, not racism or
economic development – development that is sensitive to the physical and human
geography of an area and environmental and economic sustainability.
The Solomons family’s entitlement is
typical of developers, although expressed far more shamelessly and
inappropriately than usual, that is, the mistaken belief their “right” trumps
their neighbours’ constitutional environmental and geographical rights. This hubris and carpet bagging is encouraged
by an equally hubristic Cape Town political administration that’s eroding those
rights with their self-styled red-carpet approach to developers and obstinately
wrong planning decisions.
The Spatial Planning and Land use
Management White Paper, quoting Rio’s Agenda 21 states:
“The broad objective is to facilitate
allocation of land to the uses that provide the greatest sustainable benefits
and to promote the transition to a sustainable and integrated management of
land resources."
Note the emphasis on sustainable
benefits. The DA-run city claims they
are committed to densification, but how does promoting urban sprawl into rural,
semi-rural and agricultural areas – Philippi, West Coast (Wescape) and
Constantia – promote densification, and the sustainable benefits and Agenda 21
of national spatial planning policy?
They also claim these developments
promote economic development. If this is
so, why does Cape Town’s growth (2.6%) lag behind Johannesburg (3.2%) and
Tshwane’s (3.1%)? And why has the
Western Cape’s contribution to national GDP declined from 14.5% in 2006 to
13.7% in 2015 under DA rule. While there
are macro-economic reasons for it – the major one is the Western Cape is tied
to national policy and economically – it disproves the assumption, stated by
the DA as an article of faith, that its developer-friendly policy is improving
the economy.
However, in a letter last week to the
Cape Argus councillor Brett Herron stated the truth: These approvals are in order to generate tax revenue
for the city.
The DA has a Mr Hyde/Mr Hyde – no
good Dr Jekyll to moderate the bad other
– approach to development and good governance.
They tell citizens what they think we want to hear while, in private,
assuring their developer friends nothing gets in the way of another monster
high-rise or sprawling township. Or perhaps, prosaically, they don’t know what
they’re doing.
The disputes will end at the
“independent” municipal planning tribunal.
More than half the members are city officials, and they will vote to
approve per their superiors’ instructions. The city declined to give me CVs of members,
but it is likely non-city members may be connected professionally to
developers, and they too will approve.
These are the latest in a long line
of infamous planning decisions by the DA – those mentioned above and the
unnecessary “luxury” Chapman’s Peak toll plaza the Western Cape government made
the taxpayer pay for. All met with
unanimous or near unanimous condemnation from the public, academics and
planning and other professionals.
However, according to the DA we are wrong and don’t know what
we’re talking about. With Maiden’s Cove,
instead of courteously making (false) election promises, as is the usual
practice, and saying the DA promises to look into citizens’ concerns, Brett Herron, aka
#DeLilleforMayor, and his colleague Cameron Arendse insulted residents
with these statements: “Peddling false information”, telling “lies”, “blatantly
dishonest”, “campaigning to protect status quo and privilege”, “campaigning for
the ANC”, and basically, residents are stupid and don’t know what they are
objecting to (“dress objections up as something they are not”).
They have a strange way of asking people to vote for them at next
month’s elections. They insult
taxpaying, law-abiding residents and treat them with blatant contempt and aggression,
but welcome faeces
protestors into the party – people who broke the law and engaged in one of
the lowest forms of protests there is.
The DA’s transformation into a Mini-Me version of the ANC is almost
total: Both parties condescend and ignore citizens’ interests, treat us
with contempt and consider us mere election fodder. However, I have yet
to encounter an ANC politician addressing voters – not another politician, mind
– in the way the always supercilious Herron has spoken to us in his Cape Argus
letter.
This is the DA once you strip away the urbane veneer: Street
fighters who use abusive verbiage and insults and not rational argument (their
arguments are as thin their skins and manners), like infamous councillors Ian
Iversen and Elizabeth Brunette.
Herron and DA supporters, who are as rigid and dogmatic as the ANC they
claim to despise, misrepresents and insults our intelligence that the Maiden’s
Cove, etc controversies are about holding onto privilege. Do they think
only the rich of Clifton care about preserving the city’s stunning, unique
natural heritage – its selling point that places it in one of the best places
to visit in the world – for future generations? That those who live on
the Cape Flats, supposedly the beneficiaries of this environmental and urban
plunder, don’t care?
I suppose working class Bo-Kaap residents and Philippi farmers
also want to hold onto privilege. I guess the profit-seeking, super-rich
developers for whom the DA are rolling out the red carpet and selling off the
city’s treasures are really, really poor.
The people they accuse of “holding onto privilege” are the potential
customers of these developments that are taking place in largely prosperous,
middle-class areas. The ironies are lost
on them.
I understand the city’s concerns about raising revenue. But what
they fail to understand is: Don’t hock city treasures to cover daily expenses
(a finance 101 lesson).
What they can do for a start is ask his developer friends and donors,
whose financial well-being they are concerned about, why they are not investing
in the “impoverished” south-eastern part of the city where these poor people they
fretting over live, thereby creating jobs, opportunity, urban renewal, skills
and a modicum of wealth for them.
The DA’s planning and land use policy
policy is divisive and dangerous, setting citizen against citizen and citizen
against developer. It is the cause of
public unease and conflict and a concern across social and economic strata.
This is an edited version of articles that appeared in Cape Argus
and Politicsweb.
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