Cape Town by-law amendments: Apartheid mentality reflected in a neo-apartheid spatial plan
24 July 2024
Democratic Alliance Mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis, announced proposed amendments to the City of Cape Town’s Municipal Planning By-Law promising “more housing supply” and to deliver “more affordable accommodation”.
Despite his grand promises, and increasing use of the phrase “affordable housing”, the devil is in the details.
On close inspection, the draft amendments to the by-law reflect an apartheid approach to urban planning and an apartheid mentality to the location of affordable housing.
There are several issues one can take with the proposed amendments to the by-law but two, in particular, expose the apartheid mentality of this DA government.
The first one is the introduction of clauses that provide for impounding “movable property” and we all know what “movable property” is intended to be impounded: shack-building and backyard dwelling material.
The target is clearly those who are landless, homeless and poor, and people of colour.
This unusual inclusion extends this government’s zealous reliance on “impounding” to solve the pressures of urbanisation and under-development. It has become their default response to the symptoms of their failures to address crucial urban issues such as homelessness, transportation, and now housing delivery.
The second is the inclusion of automatic additional development rights, to residential zoning, for building “affordable flats”. This will allow for up to 12 affordable rental flats to be added to properties zoned for single-residential purposes.
This might sound like a major step forward in addressing spatial injustice, but the map that reflects the areas where this would be allowed, tells a whole different story. A story of crude and undeniable racism.
The shocking map is essentially all of the Cape Flats and none of the so-called leafy suburbs. It’s a copy of the Group Areas Act map of Cape Town with the rights being confined to areas that were designated as coloured or black areas under apartheid.
The vast extent of the traditional southern suburbs is excluded from this special “affordable rental flats” zoning except for a tiny area - Westlake - a relatively dense “coloured” neighbourhood surrounded by traditionally white areas.
The proposal is wrong, not only because it perpetuates spatial injustice, but because it also encourages massively increased densities in areas that are already the most densely populated.
This would therefore compound associated challenges such as traffic congestion and costs of services, undermining all of the policy and planning work that has been done to rectify the apartheid spatial planning and to correct the inverse density patterns.
The inclusion of affordable housing in an amended Municipal Planning By- Law is exactly what is needed, but this model would relegate people of colour to continue to live far away from economic opportunities in overcrowded ghettos.
South Africans, but more particularly the people of Cape Town, must pay attention to the Democratic Alliance showing us all who they are. When you look beyond the announcements you will find a party that governs with apartheid instincts.
Find the map here: https://resource.capetown.gov.za/documentcentre/Documents/Maps%20and%20statistics/SmallScaleRentalUnit_Overlay_Zone_Map.pdf
Issued by Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General & Member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament, 24 July 2024
