Philippi horticultural area besieged
While Constantia wine farms were saved, policies endanger SA’s most productive growth region
ON MAY 21 the City of Cape Town (CoCT) Appeal Committee reversed the City’s 2017 decision to rezone 96ha in the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA) and upheld the appeal by the PHA Campaign.
This rezone application – by U-Vest developers – was also turned down by Heritage Western Cape’s MEC Appeal Panel in February 2017. But the area – after intense resistance by the PHA Campaign in 2013 – had already been turned down for an urban edge shift in 2014, as well by the national Minister of Agriculture stating clearly in 2012 that he needs to keep this prime agricultural land to grow food.
Similarly, a full city council voted in 2009 to turn down the 497ha Oaklands City development next door; province shifted this urban edge in 2011 anyway, and the development is going ahead.
In view of these constant irrational flipflops in administrative decision-making, the PHA Campaign is now asking for a declaratory order from a judge to protect the whole area.
Furthermore, the PHA Campaign has called for full municipal and provincial statutory protection for the 3 169ha that makes up the PHA.
The request to utilise these statutory mechanisms – especially pertinent in this time of drought disaster crisis – have not only been ignored by both the City and MEC Anton Bredell; they are also opposing the PHA Campaign’s court application in the high court, alongside developers.
This rezone mini victory was supposedly informed by the recommendations of the April 2018 Indego Study. Yet this rezone decision – “saving” only 96ha of a total of 1 200ha of proposed developments and mines in the PHA – is also likely to be taken on review by developers. Requiring a voluntary, unfunded, community-based organisation to scramble once again to oppose deep-pocketed developers in the high court.
The R1million Indego study – the seventh on the PHA-commissioned by Alan Winde (MEC Agriculture) does not take a principled stand to protect the whole of the PHA; it also avoids serious issues which have led to the destruction of the land over the last 10 years.
Of prime concern is that it protects ONLY 1 884ha of a total of 3 169ha.
Giving free rein in the south to developers – precisely upon the primary recharge zone for the Cape Flats Aquifer.
As the study attests, the PHA is the Western Cape’s best drought-proof land; it is also the most productive horticultural area in the country.
Property Rezones equal millions of rands profit – for doing nothing. A third of the PHA is held by speculators who buy cheap agricultural land, where a rezone offers huge returns. Rural land that’s worth R250 000/ha turns into a R2m/ha windfall. In the case of the 96ha U-Vest Rezone, R20m worth of land would have instantly become worth R52.6m. They contribute to the property bubble in our area – making farmland unaffordable to farmers. And in the long run, food unaffordable to citizens.
Far from protecting the PHA from such market forces, as noted in several previous studies on the PHA, the Indego Study concedes to this while the City entertains and supports such applications.
These speculators are also engaged in illegal sand mining, easily identifiable on Google maps, making themselves millions of rands while the City and Provincial Department of Environmental Affairs stand by and watches; an ecologically destroyed PHA is much easier to pave over.
The Indego study also does not address the history and challenge of illegal dumping in the PHA. This service delivery issue is an excellent yardstick to measure whether we will see the continued decay and incremental demise of the PHA.
There is a connection between Illegal dumping, land speculation, non-conforming land use and land invasion. Illegal dumping is destroying the farmlands, polluting the aquifer, and is a serious health risk along with the loss of valuable agricultural land. Instead of using environmental legislation – illegal dumping is a serious environmental crime which carries a R1m fine and up to a 10 years jail sentence – MEC Bredell (Provincial Department of Environment) is issuing 24G permissions which, for a small fee, give property owners who use their land as illegal dump sites a get out of jail free card. The CoCT has for a decade ignored their responsibility to issue clean- up notices on these dumpedon properties. The City has also refused to police non-conforming land use (also, an easily accomplished desktop exercise).
Properties that have become dump sites are particularly problematic.
Owners should, at the very least, be made to remove the dumped material and rehabilitate the land – something entirely achievable under current legislation.
A number of actions need to happen before we can conclude that the City and province is serious about protecting the PHA and the below ground Cape Flats Aquifer.
Mapping illegally dumped-on land need to be followed by a rehabilitation plan.
It is necessary to develop new title deed restrictions and by-laws that clearly outline strict aquifer-sensitive land use, incentivise heritage, environmental-appropriate building norms and features, encourage rural-appropriate and aquifer-sensitive infrastructure service delivery by council, and incentivise progressive eco-farming practice.
This is exactly the methodology which saved the Constantia wine farm area.
Not surprisingly, the Indego Study reveals low levels of trust between the diverse community groupings in the PHA.
This has come about after a decade of the City and province engaging with local community-based organisations in bad faith, withholding service delivery and simultaneously driving a development agenda.
If the mayor (whoever that may be this month), Anton Bredell and Alan Winde (Department of Agriculture) are serious about protecting the PHA, they need to listen to and engage with our community in a meaningful way.
The only signal of a change of heart on the PHA and aquifer by the City and provincial government will be when they take a principled position to protect the whole of the 3 169ha PHA, and desist from opposing the PHA community in the high court.