DA decision is dismaying
WHEN governments try to dance themselves out of tricky situations, they issue media statements with paragraphs that read: “Cabinet accepted that a holistic approach to the utilisation of provincial assets, and the methods by which the province is pursuing its legislative obligations and policies in that regard, is preferable to an ad hoc site by site determination.” This is unreadable rubbish. And yet, it was a paragraph in a media release issued by the DA-run Western Cape government, stating it would go ahead with the private sale of the highly contested Tafelberg school site in Sea Point, about 5km from the Cape Town city centre.
Activist groups had been campaigning for affordable housing to be built on the site.
The provincial government instead “issued an instruction for affordable housing to be included as a condition in the release of another piece of property, the Helen Bowden Nurses Home, near the V&A Waterfront”.
It further instructed that any proposed disposal or use of the old Woodstock Hospital site, outside the city, should also be linked to affordable housing.
The Western Cape Provincial Government will disagree, but we say this loudly and clearly: You have no commitment to reversing the spatial policies that have been in place since even before the white supremacist National Party came into power in 1948.
The provincial government’s plans for the nurses’ home and the Woodstock Hospital are afterthoughts, at best, but more likely they’re fob-offs to those who fought so hard to convince the province to set aside Tafelberg for affordable housing.
We believe that, from the word go, Helen Zille and her cabinet had no intention of acceding to the demands of Reclaim the City and other activist groups.
We say those who voted against using the site for affordable housing ought to hang their heads in shame.
Have they for one moment thought about those who were kicked out of their homes throughout the southern suburbs? Yes, black people.
Those previously disadvantaged South Africans who support Zille and her ilk should ask themselves just one question: Based on Wednesday’s decision, can the DA, wherever they are, be trusted to ensure restitutive justice for any of the victims of the Group Areas Act and other forms of forced removals legislation?