Faiez Jacobs

THE air hangs heavy with smoke rising from the streets to the south and to the east in the city of Cape Town as tyres burn, Molotov cocktails are hurled and stones and bullets fly.

Frustration among longsuffering informal dwellers, the invisible back-yarders and once culturally thriving communities evicted from homes they have lived in for generations have finally exploded.

From the back streets of the Cape Flats to the inner-city cobble-lanes of Bo-Kaap the “gatvolness’’ is there for all to see. The DA government and the MEC for Human

Settlements Bongi Madikizela can no longer hide behind convoluted statistics, obfuscating facts and shifting the blame for their decadelong lack of delivery of integrated human settlements.

The anger with which Cape Town’s informally housed residents have taken to the streets in recent months has exposed the DA’s dirty petticoat of bringing back apartheid spatial planning in the inner city and surrounds.

While we cannot condone the illegal occupation of land or the use of violence during protests, the poor have been pushed to take extreme and desperate measures to realise their constitutional right to security, comfort and dignity of a permanent home. The national discussion on expropriation without compensation has also reawakened the call for land reform in urban areas where low-income households want justice. This was evident during the Land for Living march on Human Rights Day.

As another cold, wet winter approaches, patience has run out among the city’s urban poor. Tired of inhumane living arrangements on the outskirts of the city, people are rightfully demanding secure and safe housing arrangements close to economic opportunities.

The DA government has had more than a decade to end apartheid spatial planning and racially skewed property ownership. Instead, the DA government has, over the past 10 years, deliberately ignored the progressive legislative architecture and systematically killed the policy frameworks created by the ANC-led government in the Western Cape (2002-2009) that would have ensured integrated social housing for the poor in the CBD and surrounds.

These policies would not just have brought people from the edge of the city closer to opportunities through well-located housing, but it would also have improved social cohesion by integrating our historically racially and culturally divided communities.

An analysis of the human settlement programmes over the past decade indicates that the DA has intentionally reintroduced apartheid spatial planning and a nuanced group areas act for the CBD and surrounds. The DA, it seems, is bringing back apartheid through the back door. Just recently, the party ignored public pressure and went ahead with the sale of the Tafelberg school, even though the buyer was prepared to withdraw from the sale.

It dismissed an opportunity to provide domestic workers with proper family accommodation in the Sea Point area. For years, the women have been saving money while lobbying the City for their right to property. They have declared the Green Point Common a heritage

PICTURE: EPA/AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY (ANA) Pupils on their way home from school walk past a burning barricade during protests against evictions in Ocean View. Several families were evicted because of alleged illegal occupation of land, sparking the community to protest. Housing and the lack...