Melanie Steyn
I LOVE Cape Town, my home, but I am concerned that it has two faces: a gorgeous, smiling one for the established residents and tourists, and a cruel and neglectful face for struggling townships. The problem boils down to attitude and political will.
Take Masiphumelele in the far south, for instance. The city is locked in an apartheid vision for this area, which houses probably 40 000 people in less than 2km2.
The rest of the population of the far south has an average of 1 450m2 each, compared to the 50m2 for Masi residents. Only 150m away, there is the gated community of Lake Michelle, fully serviced by the City. However, Masi is told they are living on an uninhabitable wetland.
If the thinking were different, they would no longer be calling it a township and trying to restrict its growth, but helping to build it up into a respectable suburb.
The differentiation is indefensible. There is land – in 2004 SA National Parks sold them 5.32ha for Masi, which they actually tried to deny when talking to Masi leaders. They are trying to return the land! They also bought 5.4ha just opposite Masi, which was previously called Solole Farm, which they now want to use partly for a fire station instead of housing. Their “vision” for the future seems to be more overcrowding and more ghastly, preventable fires.
In the last 30 years, the population of Masi has trebled.
Cape Town has always had an influx of people – urbanisation is inevitable – but in the case of Masi the City is in denial, and trying to halt the flow. This does not prevent it from allowing new, large, gated communities to be established for the wealthy arriving from elsewhere. The Fish Hoek Ratepayers are protesting that the roads and schools are already overextended.
Fire victims are still being housed in the community hall many months after the most recent fire. There are over 100 people per toilet.
Emergency shacks built after the fire are 3m x 3m, often without a single window and not fit for habitation. So inadequate has been the City’s response that millions of rand have had to be returned to overseas donors because the money has not been used for the purpose it was donated for.
To add insult to injury, the City is now planning a fence, an idea which the entire community has rejected.
The leaders have given clear and sound reasons why this expensive project would solve no problems, exacerbate some and create others. To quote: “Our strongest objection is the increase of danger for human lives via this fence: If a future fire starts in the wrong side of a section, then hundreds of people will have no way to escape but to run in the direction of the fence with the serious risk of being burnt to death. We cannot imagine that any caring government in the world could put its own people into such a situation.”
Masi has recently been allocated a mobile police station, which is inadequate. Masi is not the only area to be discriminated against in this way. Bear in mind that the national average is one police officer for every 358 people, and then read this: in Harare (Khayelitsha) it is 1:878; Nyanga 1:777; Delft 1:693; Mfuleni 1:671; Kraaifontein 1:642 and Gugulethu 1:619.
Most poor and working class people are still furthest from centres of economic activity, job opportunities, schools and health- care facilities in South Africa’s cities. Nowhere is this more evident than in Cape Town. Two examples of people being moved out include the case of Wynyard Mansions, where tenants were “progressively relocated” away from Sea Point, and De Waal Drive, where residents within a particular income bracket are being pushed out to Pelican Park, an area almost 30km outside of the city centre. When land becomes available in inner-city areas, it is sold for luxury development, never utilised for the residents already there or nearby.
We should be creating an inclusive city, so this is the thinking that needs to change urgently for Cape Town to deserve the love so many people have for her. She is our Mother City, but mothers should not have favourites!
l Steyn is an English lecturer at Cornerstone Institute