Watching with trepidation as Mother City teeters on the brink

CAPE TOWN is swinging – on a see-saw that could tip either way.

Ours will become one of two possible cities, and we need to choose now.

The first one will be thoroughly divided, with world-class residential areas and touristy attractions at its centre and ragged slums all around, while the second will be integrated and true to its diverse inheritance. Does this sound preposterous? I really don’t believe it is.

Since the 1960s, (and before) people of colour were forcibly removed from the city and from the line of southern suburbs to be “established” on the outskirts of the city.

This violent wrenching of settled communities from their homes to townships far from opportunities and facilities was indefensible then, and it’s indefensible now – but continues.

The District Six removals of the 1960s and 1970s are notorious: 60 000 people taken from their homes – established for generations – against their will. Many of the new “townships” inevitably became dumping grounds of despair and criminal activity, a legacy they are still struggling to deal with.

There were many other removals: a huge chunk of the population of Simon’s Town was ripped out and made to live in Ocean View. It happened in Hout Bay too, and up the line in Plumstead, Wynberg, Observatory and Mowbray.

In the run-up to the 2010 World Cup, hundreds of homeless people were relocated to Blikkiesdorp, and they are still there in this “temporary” relocation area, fenced in by barbed wire as in a concentration camp.

More recently, the people of the vegetable basket of Cape Town, the Philippi Horticultural Area, have been harassed and threatened because developers have their eyes on the land.

We saw it on De Waal Drive, in Salt River and Woodstock, and even on the Foreshore. In April, the City of Cape Town agreed to help the tenants of thousands of its rented homes become owners, conceding that they had paid the value of their homes many times over in monthly rentals.

The units were situated across the metro, in Grassy Park and Mitchells Plain for instance. This is encouraging because the City should be the hero of the poor. Rent lords continue to milk the poorest people in many parts of the city, and it would be heartening to see the City turning its attention to their plight.

Instead, we still read opinion pieces that blame the victims and ridicule the tenants. It most often looks as though the City is helping the developers, with their billions in assets and profits. This is why Tafelberg School in Sea Point is so crucial. It’s the fulcrum of the see-saw.

The Western Cape feasibility study has confirmed that it would be affordable to build 270 low-cost housing units in the development there, meaning the working class people who live there could stay there instead of being dumped on the outskirts once again.

If the City goes ahead and accepts this enlightened plan, we will be moving towards the city I want to see.

I want to see a city that protects the human rights of residents as fiercely as its historical buildings.

How cynical not to do that! I want the historic population of Cape Town to be respected. In District Six they thrived together, every shade of South Africa as well as immigrants and adherents of different faiths.

I want my fellow South Africans as my neighbours, not Johnny-come-lately developers and annual visitors.

There’s room for everyone, mind you, even for them, but they don’t have to expel established residents to build their holiday homes and fenced estates. I’d like to see Masiphumelele expanding and becoming a properly serviced suburb.

It could attract tourists, too, as its neighbour Noordhoek does, for instance. We need to envisage this, to become a city with a beating heart.

So it’s not a question of whether it is legal – apartheid was legal once – as Justice Moseneke said at the Helen Suzman lecture recently, it’s a question of whether it’s just. I am watching with trepidation. Will the city make a real move towards integrating housing at last? There has been enough injustice.

Mother City, your children should be clinging to your skirts – not your outskirts.

Steyn is a trustee of the St Francis Outreach Trust in Masiphumelele