I have been travelling overseas quite a bit this year. Coming back, I saw that one section of District Six (D6) had been developed substantially into yet another uniform block of houses, virtually denuded of all trees and no green spaces in-between the houses.
The developer is Kalam Construction whom I am told was subcontracted by Target Projects via the Department of Land Affairs. Googling Kalam Constructions was an interesting exercise. Its team consists of Sedick Kalam and Nizaar Kalam but both pictures reveal the same person.
It is a shocking shame that the Democratic Alliance has allowed this plan to continue under its watch on the corrupt edifice of the previous ANC government who in 2000 allowed a tri-partite agreement to be signed between the City of Cape Town, the District Six Beneficiary Trust and the Land Commission. At the time the Trust had no locus standi and did not represent the interests of all the claimants.
Cognisant of its illegal status, the Trust reregistered itself in 2001 as the District Six Beneficiary and Redevelopment Trust. Allegedly, they have not complied with their Trust Deed as registered by the Masters Office. Many of its members have passed on and AGMs have not been held for many years until 2008.
Based on virtually no consultation with ALL the representatives of former D6 residents - owners, traders, tenants, leaders of all faith-based and community organisations - the City of Cape Town continued discussions with the disreputable Beneficiary Trust and the Land Restitution Commission instituting a plan that violates the very letter of the Land Restitution Act.
When I left the D6 Land Claims Commission, we had received over 2000 claims. Subsequently some people received monetary compensation and others not. There were over 300 property owners some of whom were ‘coerced' by the Commission to take money. Rightly construed as "irregular" agreements, many were not given the full picture of what their properties were worth.
Hence the District 6 Advocacy Committee is still fighting on behalf of 40 owners who collectively owned over 5 hectares of land, demanding fair compensation. This Committee is dismissed as loony because they insist on exposing the ‘administrative corruption' at play and the warped understanding that tenants were more important than owners.
What we have in D6 is not RESTITUTION. Future residents would have to pay over R200 000 per property. It is time for the City of Cape Town, Province, and the Land Restitution Commission to reveal what agreements have been entered into with all the parties concerned. Who is benefiting? How much money has been exchanged between the current owners of land, Province, the City and contractors? Where is the land audit of transactions between contractors and government as owners of the land? There is no transparency and what we need is a Judicial Commission of Inquiry.
In writing this column, I phoned a DA government official to ask a few questions about current developments in D6, and I was told patronisingly that I am out of touch with latest developments and know nothing. This from a young white man who was not even born when I lived in D6 where my father had two parishes!
The City has been less than transparent about what is going on. On two occasions, I took two delegations of representatives from D6 to meet with then Executive Mayor of Cape Town, Helen Zille, and then later to meet with her as Premier of the Western Cape. The least the DA could have done was to include them into a broad development forum and so create social capital amongst a community has become deeply disaffected and that the DA claims to represent!
This article first appeared in Die Burger.
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