D6: Another court battle
Working Committee turns to private investors to speed up process
THE District Six Working Committee has brought private investors on board in its effort to attain restitution after the government recently failed to show its plans for getting claimants back into the area.
On the deadline day given by the Western Cape High Court to the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform to submit its plan to speed up the restitution process, acting deputy director Pule Sekwana submitted an affidavit citing a number of reasons why they could not comply with the court’s order, including financial struggles.
Yesterday former residents attended a meeting hosted by the working committee to decide on the way forward.
Committee chairperson Shahied Ajam said they were working with investors to get claimants back into the area.
Their lawyers were also working on challenging Sekwana’s affidavit.
“We have a plan to get things moving. The department has insulted the people and the court by not presenting the plan,” Ajam said.
In November last year Western Cape High Court Judge Jody Kollapen ordered the restitution plan to include a conceptual layout for the redevelopment of District Six; funding details and budgets; time frames for the plan’s implementation; and a methodology that would be applied in allocating residential units.
But Sekwana said: “The concerns and challenges faced by the minister and the officials, impacting the finalisation of the plan, are in relation to the affordability of the redevelopment, taking into consideration the preferences and needs of the community, the Heritage status, along with the on-site state of the land. All of these factors act as cost drivers to achieving the redevelopment.”
Ajam said the claimants’ hopes and dreams had been dashed by the department. He said the non-compliance with the court order was also in violation of the department’s constitutional obligations.
“What was delivered to the court was a poor excuse for non-delivery. All the government could offer as an explanation for their failure to deliver the much-anticipated conceptual plan was the holiday breaks in mid-December 2018 and mid-January 2019. This is intolerable. The truth of the matter is that the government had many years to prepare their plans, because restitution and return to the land has been a burning issue for years,” Ajam said.
According to advocate Geoff Budlender, who took on the case on behalf of the claimants, 89% of District Six claimants, or 1078 people, have still not received a home 20 years after the restitution process started.
He argued that at the pace the government was working, it would take about 80 years to provide houses for the claimants.