University ignites Plett protests

Tempers among New Horizons residents flared up once again over housing developments and spilled over into a series of protests on Thursday and Friday last week. This time, it was sparked by news of a planned university for Bitou - reported on in KnysnaPlett Herald on 20 August - with residents fearing that land earmarked for housing will be taken up by the university.

The municipality has built more than 3 000 RDP houses over the past 15 years, of which New Horizons received only 62 in 2016. This despite the acquisition of a portion of land in Ebenezer in October last year, which was earmarked for about 1 500 sites. Another portion of Ebenezer was purchased in 2016, but no development has taken place there either.

For more than two decades, the New Horizons community has been lobbying for housing, which boiled over in violent protests in 2018 and brought the town to a near standstill. Since then, several protests have sporadically broken out.

Community leader Claude Terblanche said Bitou Mayor Peter Lobese and a team, including a representative from the organisation proposing the university, visited the Ebenezer land as a possible site for the institution on Tuesday last week, and on Thursday 3 September a meeting was held with residents and attended by the Bitou Speaker. Following the meeting a group of residents took to the N2 in frustration.

"The community is not supporting this drive by the mayor," said Terblanche. "We are not against education, but Ebenezer was earmarked for housing."

In a statement, Lobese hit back at residents, condemning any "form of incitement of residents to resort to violent protest". He explained that the property identified for establishing the university's first phase - a transactional law clinic - is a building in Ebenezer that is unoccupied.

Lobese said the housing development for Portion 20 of the Ebenezer land has been approved and budgeted for. "The plans to develop this housing project are progressing well," he stated, adding that the tender to install infrastructure is in the municipality's supply chain system.

"The project to develop housing at the Ebenezer site has always been and will always be one of the key objectives of this council," he said.

Heading the university proposal, Professor Anele Hammond of Engandin' Stiftung stated on record that the establishment and the operations of the institution would be funded from the university's own coffers. Meanwhile, the caucus leader of the DA in Bitou, Bill Nel, has issued a statement alleging that Council did not follow due process with the university project.

"The decision was made without Council seeing a credible business plan or a scrap of evidence confirming that any of the government-required approvals for such an endeavour had even been applied for," he said. An update on the story will follow as soon as comment from the municipality is received.