Tafelberg row: Lindiwe Sisulu enters fray

City wanted to buy site Subsidy claim disputed

THE national Department of Human Settlements has hit out at the Western Cape government for opting to sell the Tafelberg school site in Sea Point to a private entity – rather than using it for social housing – and questioned the basis for its controversial decision.

And as the fall- out over the R135 million sale of the property to the Phyllis Jowell Jewish School continued, a top urban planner, a spokesperson for Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille, and pressure group Reclaim the City added their voices to the growing controversy.

Ndivhuwo Mabaya, spokesperson for Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, said Sisulu would contact Western Cape human settlements MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela to discuss the matter.

“We do not agree with the decision to sell the site to a private entity. We believe the land should be used for social housing for the poor and that land in the city should be prioritised for affordable social housing,” Mabaya said.

Announcing its decision earlier this week, the Western Cape government cited fiscal budget cuts, that proposals for mixed use of the site had seriously underestimated the costs involved and that the site was not in a so-called “restructuring zone” and therefore did not qualify for a subsidy from the national government as reasons for not using it for social housing.

But Mabaya disagreed: “The restructuring zone they are referring to is not a current one. The local government knows we are in the process of defining new zones and that the process will be completed soon.

“We believe the Tafelberg site should be used by the City of Cape Town for the building of housing for the poor, and for black and coloured people who work in the CBD.”

Madikizela said the province’s decision was not based solely on the restructuring zone issue.

“The Western Cape govern- ment made a decision and it must be respected that we are a different sphere of government and can make independent decisions,” he said.

He added the provincial government had several other affordable housing projects in the pipeline, including proposed development of the Woodstock Hospital site as well as the Helen Bowden Nurses’ Home near the Waterfront.

Yesterday, the City of Cape Town said it would have made an offer to purchase the Tafelberg site for social housing had the provincial government not gone ahead with its sale of the site to private buyers.

But Zara Nicholson, the spokesperson for mayor Patricia de Lille, stressed the City respected the right of the provincial government to make decisions.

She added the public was within its democratic right to challenge the decision and that the City welcomed decisions in support of more affordable housing in the metro.

She said the City had committed itself to achieving spa- tial transformation through the city council’s Organisational Development and Transformation Plan.

Top urban planner Kate Hogarth criticised the private sale of the property.

“This is a huge missed opportunity to demonstrate the merits of social housing on a prominent site and start to overcome some of the fears and challenges of integrating affordable housing into exclusive areas.”

Hogarth said a key misunderstanding was that affordable housing was necessarily low quality and associated with social ills such as crime.

This caused fear in established neighbourhoods, and often meant affordable housing schemes did not happen in these areas.

In a statement issued shortly after the provincial government announced its decision, activist group Reclaim the City, which led the campaign against the private sale of the property, vowed to carry on with the fight for Tafelberg. – Additional reporting by Vivian Warby