Philippi Horticultural Area campaign anxiously awaits heritage verdict
IN FEBRUARY this year, the campaign celebrated a small victory in their fight to defend the farmlands of the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA) from being paved over.
Heritage Western Cape (HWC) turned down the application for 13 PHA erven to be rezoned from farmland to an upmarket housing development.
The erven – a third of the 39 parcels of land that were turned down for urban development by MEC Bredell in 2014 – are now being processed for housing by the City of Cape Town anyway.
In its original ruling HWC noted: “The committee is of the opinion that the heritage significance of the PHA is under threat due to the continual erosion of the farm lands; development of this property will derogate from the significance of both immediate site and overall significance of the Philippi Horticultural Area.”
The verdict of a second appeal of this ruling by developers is due out in the next few weeks.
The Heritage Western Cape decision-making process has been a pleasure to engage. Real “public participation”, its processes allow for community interaction with committees and appeal panels, being given equal space to present their facts. Our input, alongside that of the HWC legal team at both appeal hearings made for a well-founded case to protect the PHA.
The heritage value, the landscape, history and farming culture of the PHA is priceless and irreplaceable.
The UN programme Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems is for identification and the dynamic conservation of traditional agricultural systems.
The PHA is such a system: the term “Breadbasket of the City” is not an exaggeration. Farmers who came to these shores over 130 years ago forged farming practice out of the wet, sandy and windy Cape Flats conditions. It was not easy. It took generations of trial and error, blood, sweat, tears and even death to build this system.
Part of my land was the smallholding and original nursery of a certain Mr Starke. Mr Starke lost his life on the land when the wall of a sloot he was busy digging collapsed and buried him alive. Severe winter rainfall in the PHA needs to be diverted from homesteads through sloots farmers built themselves.
Today we value these sloot systems, improve on them and make sure they are protected from development. Our livelihoods and our lives depend on it. Starke Ayres is now a household name.
The future heritage value of the PHA is now crucial: climate change will cause havoc with our water resources and consequently our food production.
More frequent droughts, and less rainfall. Fortunately the aquifer beneath the PHA buffers all of this. The campaign also fights to lead farming into an ecologically sustainable future. We are modelling farming techniques that could capture all the city’s carbon emissions. This is the heritage we seek to leave behind.
I also appeared as a witness and victim of a heritage deleted by apartheid.
My paternal grandparents lived in Strandfontein road in the PHA. As a child, I was introduced to the joys of fruit and vegetable gardening. Our yard was a veritable small farm: a large vegetable growing area, grape vines that climbed over the yard’s stoep pergola, fig, lemon, guava, mulberry and loquat trees. At the back of the yard was a large chicken run – I delighted in collecting eggs for the morning breakfast. One day all this vanished when we were forcibly removed from the area.
My grandparents’ heritage, and mine, was deleted by the Group Areas Act. Today I face off a cynical storm that seeks to trivialise and ignore my heritage under apartheid, and now delete the farming heritage I want to leave for my children and grandchildren.
If the developer’s latest appeal is granted, it will trigger a domino effect that will be the beginning of the end of the PHA farmlands, my livelihood, a rich 130-year farming history, and a core part of the city’s heritage. Indeed, the soul of the city will be lost.
A decision by the Appeal Panel of the Western Cape Department of Arts, Culture and Sport is expected in the next two weeks.
Sonday is convener of the Philippi Horticultural Area Food & Farming Campaign