Plan to make Cape Town prosperous, safer city for all

I WISH to commend the Cape Argus for its initiative aimed at congregating all who can help to make Cape Town as safe as it is beautiful. That is an ambition worthy of achieving.

Last week, in our spatial planning and environment portfolio committee, we discussed the Service Delivery and Budget Implementation Plan. The document that served before the committee expressed all the right sentiments.

For example, it stated that “spatial planning encompasses forward planning of land to ensure adequate space is allocated to provide for the ordinary land use needs of city growth and that the distribution of land use is done in such a manner to ensure the wellbeing of the population, protection of the integrity of the environment and enhancement of the economy”.

It went on to explain that achieving spatial justice was a necessary component of that plan. Why?

The City recognised that it was under compulsion to “reverse historical spatial planning patterns to prevent ghetto-isation and segregation, and the unfair allocation of public resources, to ensure that the needs of the poor are prioritised”.

While the City had a moral obligation to do so, it was also required under the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act (Spluma), gazetted in October 2015, to bring its spatial development framework into alignment with Spluma.

Over and above that, the national government in 2006 created the Neighbourhood Development Partnership Grant. The purpose was to encourage and exhort municipal governments to use the annual grant to develop multifaceted plans for apartheid-era townships to attract private sector investment there.

It pointed out in Toolkit 1 that townships were sitting on unproductive assets worth billions of rand. Without being able to use their properties as collateral, residents of the townships are economically stymied and their areas remain economically stagnant.

Unfortunately, the City did not move to ignite economic development in the townships. The three-year fight of Sub-Council 10 to get Spine Road, which runs through Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain, to become a main road of the type running through Claremont, in spite of the full council approving my motion to that effect, has not produced the desired effect. That is why, as the report before us stated, land remains a contested, technical and highly politicised issue. FAROUK CASSIM | Cope, Milnerton