DA’s all song and dance

WHEN governments try to dance out of tricky situations, they issue media statements with paragraphs that read like this… “Cabinet accepted that a holistic approach to the utilisation of provincial assets, and the methods by which the Province is pursuing its legislative obligations and policies in that regard, is preferable to an ad hoc site by site determination.”

This is unreadable rhetoric, yet it was a paragraph in a media release issued by the DA-run Western Cape government, stating it would go ahead with the private sale of the highly-contested Tafelberg School site in Sea Point.

Activist groups had been campaigning for affordable housing to be built on this site. The provincial government instead “issued an instruction for affordable housing to be included as a condition in the release of another piece of property, the Helen Bowden Nurses Home, near the V&A Waterfront”.

It further instructed that any proposed disposal or use of the old Woodstock Hospital site should also be linked to affordable housing.

The provincial government will disagree, but we say this loudly and clearly: You have no commitment to reversing the spatial policies that have been in place since even before the white supremacist National Party came into power in 1948.

Its plans for the nurses’ home and the Woodstock Hospital are afterthoughts, at best, but more likely are fob-offs to those who fought to convince the province to set aside Tafelberg for affordable housing.

We believe that Helen Zille and her cabinet had no intention of acceding to the demands of Reclaim the City and other activist groups.

Those who voted against using the site for affordable housing ought to hang their heads in shame. Have they thought about who were kicked out of their homes throughout the southern suburbs? Yes, black people.

Those previously disadvantaged South Africans who support Zille and her ilk should ask themselves: Based on yesterday’s decision, can the DA be trusted to ensure restitutive justice for any of the victims of forced removals legislation?