Cape Town - The provincial government, along with the City, has accused the Philippi Horticultural Area Food and Farming (PHA) Campaign of misleading the court, as the case continued in the Western Cape High Court on Wednesday.
The City said the court should not find fault with it seeing development opportunities. The City’s legal representative, Ron Paschke, said: “Granting a review will still have no practical effect because it does not have an impact on any of our decisions.
“This is a city with a massive
housing crisis and a massive
unemployment problem, and part of the City’s mandate is to look for
development opportunities, as it has done with this property.”
The case dealt with the Oakland City development. Oaklands City, the developers, plan to build about 30000 homes in the area. The initial development application was made by Oaklands City back in 2008 to turn it into a residential area, but the city council voted against this. In 2016, the City reportedly granted the developer permission to rezone the land.
This was then appealed by the campaign that was formerly known as the Schaapkraal Civic and Environmental Association. The association submitted a 19-page document that strongly objected to the land-rezoning process.
Paschke refuted claims made by the campaign that the Oaklands property was made for agricultural purpose.
“The property is classified as urban land and not agricultural land. The Oaklands land is not part of the PHA,” he said.
The PHA Campaign is arguing for the preservation of a key piece of
agricultural land in the City’s jurisdiction that is under threat from proposed development.
The case challenges the administrative decisions made by Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning MEC Anton Bredell, his department and the City to rezone a part of the PHA for mixed-use development.
The province's legal representation accused the campaign of having no regard for socio-economic factors,
Advocate Nazreen Bawa said: “There are thousands of people who are desperate for housing, we have to look at what the socio objectives. And the province cannot be faulted for doing that. So with limited land, thousands of houses to build and jobs to create, schools to build and clinics to build effectively what this application shows is they’d be damned if they do or damned if they don’t.”
Bawa also told the court that Oaklands property was underutilized. “There is an erroneous belief that the land can be used for farming but the land for many years it did not provide food and it did not provide jobs and It still does not,” she said.
The legal representatives for Oaklands developers said over the past 13-years since the developer acquired the property they have spent an enormous amount of money on the land.
Advocate Michael Janisch said: “This is a development that is carefully and sensitively planned and will make a difference in preserving the ecology.”
Judgment in the case was reserved.
@MarvinCharles17