Cape Town - The Cape Town city council has confirmed it is “in the process of exploring various options for the Philippi area” that would “maximise the area’s potential for economic development, job creation, agriculture and housing”.
Spokeswoman Priya Reddy said it was hoped the process would findsustainable solutions that would strike the right balance of “maximising the agricultural potential of the area while responding to the broader urbanisation demands placed on the city”.
Reddy said the council had recently engaged the services of the Western Cape Economic Development Partnership in running a partnering project in the broader Philippi area, so that a “broad vision and strategy” could be developed over the next year that would “maximise the area's potential for economic development, job creation, agriculture and housing”.
But members of the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA) Food and Farming Campaign say the council plans to buy farmland from developers in what is regarded as the city's breadbasket was not in the best interests of anyone.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Susanna Coleman of the campaign produced a letter dated June last year from the Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning to the council in connection with the rezoning regulations for the U-Vest housing development.
In the letter, the department says: “Once the land is rezoned it will be sold to the City of Cape Town, which would then identify areas to be developed and determine what development would take place on these areas.”
Coleman said they were aware there was a housing crisis, but the council had identified 11 000ha of land that could be suitable for development elsewhere.
Coleman said during a recent heritage appeal hearing, it emerged the developers had applied for rezoning which they said was not for development rights, but to “enable rezoning to allow for future urban development”.
Nazeer Sonday, spokesman for the PHA Food and Farming Campaign, said they believed there was something illegal going on which was why they had resubmitted their complaint to the public protector.
He said they had asked the public protector to halt the processing of all the developments in the PHA.
They also want the investigation to include the identification of land bought in the PHA, at what cost and to what end.
In 2014, a complaint was first laid with the Public Protector’s office against the council and the province.
They have asked the public protector to include in its investigation “fruitless and wasteful expenditure” by the council for commissioning five studies on the PHA, at taxpayers' expense - one of which cost more than R1 million - and then ignoring their contents.
Sonday said they had also started an application for the entire PHA to be declared a heritage site.
Cape Argus