Prolonged drought potentially has two devastating long-term effects: moving underground, as it has in California, and wreaking havoc on the agricultural sector. In this second instalment of the Cape of Storms to Come series: Playing fast and loose with South Africa’s most productive horticultural area per hectare.
In the year Cape Town’s municipal water is at risk of running out, activists from the Philippi Horticultural Area Food and Farming Campaign are taking their case to the High Court, fighting for land they say is crucial to efficient use of the Cape Flats Aquifer.
For nearly a decade – and backed by 33 civil society organisations – they have been contesting two proposed developments on an area measuring some 753ha. In court, respondents will be officials from local, provincial and national government, property developers, and Heritage Western Cape.
Once part of the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA), the land is now owned by property developers. Its land use designation has been changed from agricultural to urban, despite warnings from researchers – both independent and taxpayer-funded – that development would threaten food and water security in the metropole.
The first is a proposed development by Uvest, which overlaps with a large area of highly productive farmland. One portion of this land is set to be sold to the City of Cape Town at R52-million, subject to completion of the rezoning process.
The other proposed development, Oakland City, is earmarked for an area where – according to researchers – re-absorption of water into the Cape Flats Aquifer is especially effective. This development was at the centre of an investigation by the Financial Services Board after the FSB found the land’s value had been massively inflated.
A snapshot of what is at stake: The City has warned that “Day Zero” could occur in May 2018 if consumption is not reduced to around 500m litres per day. Farmers in the Western Cape are on 50% rations. The province’s agricultural industry is staring down the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and a drought-related loss in agricultural output that would cost the economy R3.2-billion.
The Philippi Horticultural Area – described by farmers as “drought-proof” thanks to the temperate climate and easy access to groundwater – is the most productive horticultural area per hectare in the country. Studies have underlined its role in the future food security of the region.
This multi-part investigation delves into why and how one of the region’s most valuable horticultural areas and its crucial groundwater source, the Cape Flats Aquifer, have potentially been threatened in the years running up to the current disaster. This occurred despite repeated warnings from researchers that the area was important in sustaining food and water security for the rapidly growing city. This is Chapter One.
The southern edge of the Philippi Horticultural Area. Drone footage by Christiaan Serfontein
It's a kingdom of cheap rural land and potential mega-profits where…R36-million of farmland is now worth R890-million and, if the city gets its way, 1,000 hectares of construction.
– Susanna Coleman, PHA Food and Farming Campaign
surrounding area that sees the highest level of gang violence in South Africa. Nyanga, its nearest neighbour, has held the dubious title of murder capital of the country for years. Just weeks before publishing, Philippi East suffered two mass killings in a week, a level of violence that saw the national Police Minister intervening under pressure from citizens.
The Cape Flats Aquifer (CFA), for its part, spans several hundred square kilometres, stretching from False Bay in the south all the way to Tygerberg Hills in the north-east, and Milnerton in the north-west. Much of it is covered by urban development after thousands of people were forced to move to the Cape Flats under the Group Areas Act in the 1950s. This was done despite the apartheid government’s full knowledge that the homes built there would have a short lifespan due to the high water table. Many homes are damp, flooding in winter.
Philippi’s story is, in many ways, the story of South Africa’s past, and its future. And the story of what’s shifting as we adjust to the New Normal.
The PHA has been farmed since the 1870s, when German settlers arrived to face the unenviable task of taming the sand dunes to produce food for the colony. The area is still a significant part of South Africa’s remaining 14-million hectares of arable land, described as Cape Town’s bread basket.
There are several types of farms in the area: large, commercial farms, often run by descendants of the German settlers dating back to the 1800s; small-scale or subsistence farms that provide fruit, vegetables and flowers both to large supermarket chains and to small businesses across the Western Cape; and then there are those who won farms in land claims.
Drive in during harvest time and you will see farmworkers picking lettuces and cabbages on the side of the main road, cars whizzing past them. Several thousand farmworkers are employed in the PHA. The area provides an estimated 3,760 jobs in horticulture alone, primarily to unskilled women. Research has estimated it to deliver as much as 80% of the metropole’s vegetables, and over 50 kinds of crops, including flowers.
This is particularly useful since most of the inhabitants living nearby are poor. Food insecurity in the metropole is a real problem – nearly three-quarters of low-income households have been estimated to be food insecure. This threat has increased in 2017, with drought and an invasion of army worms across the Western Cape.
The Western Cape, in fact, produces over 50% of the country’s agricultural exports, and is expecting further declines in production and job opportunities. In October 2017, COGTA predicted civil unrest and the loss of another 50,000 jobs in farming due to the drought. R40-million had already been lost in agricultural workers’ wages.
For the PHA, the proximity of the farms to urban areas also means food transport costs are kept to a minimum – a necessary consideration, where drought has driven prices up overall. And so, both independent research and research commissioned by local government has learned that the PHA is potentially crucial to the future food security of the city – particularly the city’s poorest, but also its middle-class and wealthier citizens.
n the heart of the Cape Flats, just a 20-minute drive from the Cape Town city centre, lies the Philippi Horticultural Area, a globally unique horticultural area spanning 2090ha (20.8km2). It’s an oasis in a
a serious shortage of agricultural land. “Urban agriculture is a component within the urban planning processes that… can assist in addressing a variety of the urban planning and developmental challenges,” the report notes. “Applying the internationally recognised norm of 0.4 hectares of arable land to feed a person, the food needs for Cape Town, given the 2006 population figure of 3,240,000, require 1.3-million hectares to sustain its population, or 9.2% of South Africa’s arable land.” It adds: “What are the implications for a city with a projected population of 4,554,636 by 2020?”1
n a commissioned report to the City’s Planning and Environment Portfolio Committee in 2009, titled Recommendations of the Philippi Horticultural Area Task Team, the City is warned that Cape Town is facing
1 Future Studies Data US.
Activists are contesting the removal of 753ha of land from the PHA.
Video by Jason Norwood-Young.
Similar concerns are being raised elsewhere too. Shortly before publishing this report, ParlyBeat reported that government's plan to improve food security throughout South Africa would cost an already strained budget another R86-billion over the next five years. The biggest cost driver would be increasing food production - particularly by smallholder farmers - and improving access to nutritious, affordable food.
In Cape Town and the surrounds, drought and a quickly growing population have underlined the issue's importance. At the 2011 Census, Cape Town’s population had grown to 3,74-million. At the time of writing this report, farmers in the Cape were on 50% water rations.
The warnings issued to the City by its own task team in 2009 were not the last. Since then the city has been repeatedly advised – through studies it commissioned and ostensibly disregarded – to preserve the PHA, and to put in place a proper management plan for the area before allowing rezoning and development there. In the meantime, there was other land available to meet the city’s housing needs. In 2010, the City’s own research found that there was up to 11,000ha of land available for development within the metropole’s urban edge.
For the PHA, the aquifer is a buffer against drought, and has served as a sustainable water source for the farms for decades. It allows farming year-round. This contributes to making the PHA the most productive horticultural area in the country per hectare. The farms produce an estimated 100,000 tonnes of vegetables annually, including 2,000 tonnes for poor families – a remarkable asset for a city with a growing population.
Nonetheless, the PHA is shrinking. This didn’t occur overnight, but it is speeding up. In 1988, under apartheid rule, a document setting out land use designation in Cape Town allowed for the PHA to be used for horticulture, silica and sand mining. Originally just over 3,400ha in size, the area has since lost not only 753ha which now lie on its southern border, but also three other tracts of land.
One of these is the Schaapkraal smallholdings area, a 160ha strip of land along the western boundary of the PHA. The 4,000m2 of land in Schaapkraal is divided into 140 smallholdings. Of these, 41 are used for construction and transport – whereas only eight were used for this purpose in 1992. Today, only four are used exclusively for horticulture.
The second piece of land excised from the horticultural area was the Weltevreden Wedge, a 231ha land segment running all the way along the PHA’s eastern border. In the south, the Wedge is still being farmed, but dumping and informal settlements in the area pose a threat. Both the Schaapkraal smallholdings area and the Weltevreden Wedge have been designated for urban development.
The Lansdowne Industrial area is the third piece of land lost to non-conforming land uses, with 176ha excised from the PHA. As the name suggests, it is now an industrial zone.
In recent years, the re-designation of the above-mentioned land – around 1,320ha – for urban development effectively reduced the agriculturally designated land by a third. Processes are under way to develop sections of this land, including the 753ha that lie on the southern border. Of this 753ha, 281ha used to form the south-western corner of the PHA, and 472ha once made up the south-eastern corner. These two tracts are now earmarked for two separate developments: Uvest and Oakland City.
Groundwater, farming and development
According to hydrogeologist and groundwater expert Roger Parsons, the groundwater resources of the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA) are unique and form the backbone of the agricultural activities in the area. Without them, the PHA would simply not have developed. Further, he argued against housing in the area and called for further study on water use.
Says Parsons, “It is estimated about 15 to 20 million cubic metres (MCM) is abstracted each year from both boreholes and shallow open pits (suigputte). This is about 3 to 4 times more than abstracted from the Atlantis Aquifer and about the same volume abstracted in the Hex River Valley.
“In contrast to Atlantis which has been well researched and properly monitored over the past 25 years, the City of Cape Town has not allocated any resources to understand, manage or monitor the invaluable groundwater resources on which the PHA is dependent…it is timeous to reassess groundwater use in the area and adoption of a formal aquifer management program.” - Extract from a 2009 study by Roger Parsons, pp 278 – 283
Cave and Weaver (2000) were commissioned to investigate the feasibility of using stormwater run-off to artificially recharge the aquifer. This study related to the management of stormwater rather than the groundwater resource. According to Parsons, a key recommendation of the study was ignored and never implemented: “. . . a full investigation of the use of groundwater in the Philippi Horticultural Area [must] be conducted as a matter of urgency to protect the groundwater resources.”
“While Cave and Weaver (2000) did refer to the risk of groundwater mining, at no point did they conclude that the groundwater resources were being used unsustainably. They also did not conclude that horticultural activities had impacted the aquifer,” Parsons noted in his report to the city’s Planning and Environment Portfolio Committee on development of the PHA, 2009.
According to Parsons’ report, those wishing to develop the 472ha, which at the time comprised the south-eastern corner of the PHA, misinformed the city. “The reports by Agri Informatics (April 2008) and Urban Dynamics (July 2008) provide misinformation relating to groundwater; and incorrectly interpreted or selectively included information to support their position. Through the addition of adjectives and unquantified terms they create the impression that horticultural activities have impacted the aquifer. This…is simply without foundation [and] the City has shown no real interest to formally use the Cape Flats Aquifer – the most productive part of which is covered by low cost housing and unserviced informal settlements. Further, if the groundwater is being used unsustainably, then water supplies to the area can be augmented from the two nearby sewage works.” Parsons also slammed Agri Informatics and Urban Dynamics as being biased, and not considering the impacts of the proposed housing developments on the aquifer. He added: “From a groundwater perspective, both reports lack scientific credibility and objectivity; and all statements relating to groundwater should be treated with caution.”
Parsons’ assessment of proposed development on the PHA: “Groundwater resources have been used as a source of irrigation water in the PHA for many years…Groundwater continues to be used as the source of water for irrigation…No evidence exists that horticultural activities have significantly impaired or polluted the underlying aquifer. However, localised impacts caused by wastewater treatment works, waste disposal, septic tanks, animal feedlots and husbandry have been previously documented. The poor-quality groundwater observed in the northern part of the PHA is natural, and relates to the geology in that particular area. The argument that groundwater abstraction will induce saline intrusion is not relevant under the current circumstances. At best, it is conceptual speculation…the availability of water for irrigation in the PHA is a strong motivation for the continuation of the current land use.”
He added, lastly, that the land was not ideal to build houses on: “As a characteristic of the Cape Flats, the shallow groundwater level rising to the surface in winter is a development constraint. The winter groundwater level must be measured and monitored before development takes place if winter flooding and damp problems are to be avoided. Proper assessment should be a requirement before any development plans are submitted for consideration…The concept of aquifer protection zoning which is mentioned in the PEPCO report requires further consideration. Should the area be developed - or partially developed - for housing, then it is likely the ~ 20 MCM/a currently abstracted from the aquifer will no longer happen; and use of the aquifer and its water resources will decrease significantly. Potable water required for housing will have to be met from other sources.”
of land in the south to be developed, although technically speaking, these are no longer part of the PHA.
They are calling for the protection of the excised land because two-thirds of Uvest’s 281ha include productive farmland. But that’s not their only reason. The 472ha earmarked for Oakland City, never farmed and covered in sand dunes, have another important role to play: the aquifer needs land as much as the land needs it. The aquifer is replenished – or recharged – when rain water filters through the soil.
After decades of urban and industrial development above it, the CFA has few natural recharge zones left. Its water is increasingly polluted. Its best hope lies in natural rehabilitation – immediate halting of contamination, and investing in bio-remediation options such as canals and wetland restoration. (Bio-remediation is a process whereby wetlands – man-made, or natural such as those found in the PHA – are used to cleanse the water.) The PHA is the largest remaining aquifer recharge zone not covered in bricks and mortar, and has been identified as the largest high-potential bio-remediation site for the aquifer. More specifically, the 472ha earmarked for residential development has been identified as a particularly important recharge zone, because of the relatively high rate of water absorption there.
With proper planning and management, even local activists acknowledge some development need not be a death knell for the Cape Flats Aquifer and farming in PHA. However, it is unclear what consequences residential developments atop the 753ha bordering the south of the PHA will hold for the city’s food and water security. Still, the city councillors responsible for deciding the fate of the 753ha have all but ignored consistent warnings from independent researchers – and fellow officials – not to allow the development or, at the very least, to perform more comprehensive assessments before paving over the land. Yet the stage is set to use the land for housing complexes, a mini-city, and mining for silica sand. That could have dire effects for the PHA.
ctivists from the PHA Food and Farming Campaign are fighting for the protection of both existing and potential farmland that – in their words – is virtually “drought-proof”. And they don’t want the two tracts
Nazeer Sonday and his children at their home in Philippi. Photo by Sumeya Gasa.
spearheads the Philippi Food and Farming Campaign, is an organic farmer in the area; one of a growing number of smallholder farmers providing some three-quarters of the food consumed across the developing world.
Mayor Patricia de Lille told Daily Maverick Chronicle that Sonday’s development proposal for the PHA, which he attempted to present to the City but was prevented from completing, was something (that) “they wanted to sell to the City to make money, and we stopped the presentation because that is not how the City’s procurement processes work”.
But in a final affidavit submitted to the High Court in September, applicants Sonday and the PHA Campaign maintain local government officials and property developers jeopardised food security, water and a unique and irreplaceable agricultural asset, and failed to follow due process doing so. Now, they say the future of thousands of agricultural workers rests on the case’s outcome.
urrently, community activists who live, farm and work in the PHA – and who have been opposing development in the area for close to a decade – are taking decisive legal action. Nazeer Sonday, who
We have created jobs, built relationships in the local community. We have established ourselves here. It is picking up momentum. – Achmat Brinkhuis
says, is a story on its own. DA Western Cape Spokesperson on Economic Opportunities, Tourism, and Agriculture Beverley Schafer2 has warned that dumping contaminates the aquifer, calling for a crackdown. It remains a problem.
Today, Brinkhuis’s land, at least, is unrecognisable. The scent of fresh dhania, or coriander, drifts all the way down the drive. It’s rained unexpectedly, so there’s an impromptu production line, following a frantic call from one of the province’s top supermarket chains. They must stock the shelves with ready-made soup packs.
hen Achmat Brinkhuis bought his property on the PHA, there was next to nothing there – just a few stables, stationed awkwardly between a few popular illegal dumping sites. The illegal dumping, Achmat
In 2002, less than 10 years after the end of apartheid, South Africa was straddling the line between honeymoon and disillusionment. Achmat and his family fell somewhere along that line. “We moved from the local township,” he recalls. “The area that we resided in, there were a lot of gangsters. Shooting and stuff. And then my wife and I said, ‘Look, we need to get the boys out of this area, otherwise they're gonna end up…’" He trails off.
“Because already they were getting there. They could tell us, 'That's a shotgun, that is this, and that is that.'” The Brinkhuises found the vacant plot and saw its potential. Achmat’s late father was a builder and taught his sons a thing or two. Today, Achmat is still building on the farm.
“I felt like a millionaire at the time,” he says. “Now, it’s 20 times the size. I don’t go to gym. I walk across it.”
Brinkhuis and his family were part of a new generation of rising entrepreneurs, successful first-generation farmers in one of the Western Cape’s most fertile horticultural areas. They began with dhania, then moved on to chillies, which were to supply a local producer of atchar. The first crop nearly went to waste. The client wanted dry red chillies, not fresh green ones. But Brinkhuis’s wife stumbled on a place called Freshmark in Kraaifontein and suggested they give them a call. The couple had no idea who Freshmark was – the procurement agent for Shoprite and Checkers.
“We arrived there,” relates Brinkhuis, “and tables were laid out and we thought there was some mistake. We said to them carry on, we can come back if there is a function. They laughed, they said: ‘The function is for you guys!’ We were the first people of colour to supply them. They were waiting for us.” Freshmark took all their chillies and enrolled them in a planting programme. They began with 100 bunches of dhania a week; today they produce 1,000 bunches per day.
They bought chickens, too, because when one has six sons, and later a daughter, it helps to have a supply of eggs. First they had 20 chickens, then 40, then 400, then 4,000. Today they have 10,000 birds and supply Pick n Pay with eggs.
Their farm drew media attention. Their success wasn’t just individual, it was emblematic. It gave hope. There’s still a little conflict, Brinkhuis laughs, because he’s supplying competitors, but that will work out. Brinkhuis’s sons and the breadwinners of some 17 families all work on his farm.
“We have created jobs, built relationships in the local community. We have established ourselves here. It is picking up momentum.”
The farmers in the Philippi Horticultural Area supply both major retailers and numerous small business owners.
But in one of the great ironies of democratic South Africa, Brinkhuis and several of his neighbours are facing, sometimes for the second time in their lives, an exit they did not choose.
Video by Sumeya Gasa.
The Western Cape, widely hailed as one of the country’s better-run provinces post-apartheid, is coming under increasing pressure for access to resources as its population skyrockets. And like all battles, this one has not come without its share of casualties.
Farmers do not have to face direct evictions to face the potential loss of their farms, they say. They run their farms on aquifer water via boreholes and well points. “It doesn’t matter whether you destroy the aquifer by drying it up in the south, or digging a 30-metre gat into it in the north for Consol silica sand mining,” says
“It doesn’t matter whether you destroy the aquifer by drying it up in the south, or digging a 30-metre gat. Every farmer will be affected.”
PHA Food and Farming Campaign activist Susanna Coleman. “Every farmer will be affected.”
On Achmat’s car is scrawled a permanent message: If God is with us, who can be against us?
Quite a few people, he says.
“If the drought and the weather are not enough, the City Council wants to come and develop on a piece of land that has the most important resource that you need and you ask yourself – how do these people think, man?” Brinkhuis asks.
“When people mess with your livelihood,” he says, “it becomes personal.”
*
At present, the urban development on the 753ha that once formed the southern part of the PHA appears to be a foregone conclusion. Some seven years of fighting later, the activists are losing. The PHA Campaign lost its appeal against the rezoning of the 472ha bordering the south-eastern corner. The high-potential aquifer recharge zone is now set to become a miniature town – Oaklands City.
In July 2017, spokesperson for the House in the City, Mersini Iakovidis, firmly shut the door on further communication regarding the Oaklands City rezone. The PHA campaign’s appeal was rejected, and Iakovidis added: “This concludes our correspondence with the media on this matter.”
Speaker Dirk Smit, in his capacity as chairperson of the General Appeals Committee, said the applicants and objectors were informed of the decision late in June. The reasons included that the proposed development “align(ed) with the principles in, and contribute(d) to, achieving objectives set out in the Integrated Development Plan, Economic Growth Strategy and Social Development Strategy.” He added that the property was located within the Urban Edge – in other words, no longer part of the Philippi Horticultural Area in terms of planning law. He didn’t mention that this was part of the dispute.
[Philippi] presents immense opportunity for upcoming farmers to compete with commercial farming in the province, creating an enabling environment for various agricultural industries to launch and flourish.
– Beverley Schäfer
money should be poured into researching the Cape Flats’ groundwater to prevent pollution, given its potential. “We have to re-evaluate the Cape Flats,” he said. “It is very important.”
Experts differ on the potential yield of the CFA, though they agree it is an important water resource. Winter told Daily Maverick Chronicle it could ultimately yield up to 30% of Cape Town’s potable water needs. Although it would take time to build this infrastructure; its immediate yield was smaller, around 5%. He added that the CFA was unusual in the combination of its size, location, and – unlike the Table Mountain Aquifer – being an unconfined aquifer. Unconfined aquifers have a faster recharge rate, and in the case of the CFA, the water is easily accessible. “Almost twice as much water as we use in the city falls on the CFA,” Winter said, though this exceeds the usable yield. “It's a massive reservoir, and an important reservoir, because of its ability to hold that water underground, to protect that water, and there’s also an ability to filter that water – to clean it up to some extent.” Water can also be extracted at multiple points on the CFA, in contrast to a confined aquifer, where abstraction can only occur at certain points. “At no more than 15 or 20m in most parts of the CFA, you can have a fairly sustainable, year-long water resource,” he said.
Xu, who was also on a United Nations' environmental programme (Unep) team involved in studying under-groundwater in African cities, argued that conservative estimates held 20-million/m³ of water per year was available under the Flats. The Cape had a water shortage of about 4-million/m³ at the time.
In the preliminary phase of the Table Mountain Group aquifer project, earth sciences consultancy Umvoto wrote a risk report informing the City of Cape Town it would be necessary to diversify water supply. It presented similar findings at the International Conference on groundwater in 2011.
In 2005, Morris argued the Cape Flats Aquifer could yield enough water to provide 55 litres per day per person for around 500,000 people living in informal areas near it – well above the average of nine litres per day those residents were using then. Both he and Winter have argued that channelling the CFA as a water resource can reduce the danger of flooding for residents every winter, improving living conditions.
“I know there is a certain amount of monitoring done, but I don’t think it’s proactive enough, and there is little knowledge of use patterns,” Morris said.
Groundwater researchers have criticised the delay in implementing groundwater resources, but more specifically, raised concerns that bringing them online in a rush would mean the solutions weren’t sustainable. As outlined in part 1 of Cape of Storms to Come, it is difficult to justify expenditure on augmentation when rains are good and consumption appears under control. Now, however, water experts are concerned that boreholes are not adequately regulated, and there is a danger of over-abstraction – a critical concern when, according to the Western Cape Drought Task Team, the Western Cape is expected to have 30% less rainfall by 2050. California is dealing with this, even after the rains; a drought that has simply moved underground. This, says Dr Kevin Winter of the University of Cape Town’s Department of Environmental and Geographical Science and Future Water Institute, is “a battle the city will not be able to control”. Its best hope will be to introduce other incentives or to buy water from residents at a nominal rate who in turn would contribute their water to the municipal grid, he believes.
Morris says the CFA has been studied for close on 40 years and provided Daily Maverick Chronicle with reports dating back to the 1980s. “Abstraction boreholes should have been installed in the 1990s when the first major warnings were made,” he added, referring to further reports. “The CFA can be developed fairly quickly, but we must get the bureaucrats out of the programme and avoid the red tape, and let the scientists get on with the work.” The latter is easier said than done, however, given a range of legal requirements at various government levels.
Activists’ primary bugbear is that over the last decade, with Cape Town’s municipal water running critically low, the City has all but ignored repeated warnings to protect the PHA, which they say can potentially jeopardise both water quality and nearby farmers’ access to water. Meanwhile, drought and the resulting impact on agriculture in the province have become far more serious.
Researchers, and even the activists themselves, acknowledge that development need not spell disaster, if it is managed correctly. But they caution against a rushed approach and argue for rehabilitation to be part of the strategy.
“We are too critical of development,” Morris told Daily Maverick Chronicle. “(It) can be beneficial if integrated with urban farming, recreational and groundwater infiltration plots, where stormwater is channelled to semi-artificially recharge the aquifer. (But) as it is, the Philippi Horticultural Area is not well managed.” Morris argues for research into groundwater-friendly initiatives in the area. The City has, it says, considered stormwater management and artificial aquifer recharge as part of its longer-term augmentation schemes. But this does not solve the farmers' immediate problem of shrinking high-potential land.
Properly planned housing, urban farming and an environmental slant should be considered, Morris said, echoing the recommendations of Umvoto. But this will be costly. Several years ago, a site assessment by Morris to rehabilitate one farm overrun by building rubble would have cost R4-million.
Morris is not alone in proposing this approach. At the time of writing, the PHA Campaign was awaiting both its scheduled court appearance and the outcome of a six-month impact study by consulting firm Indego. Meanwhile the Standing Committee on Economic Opportunities, Tourism, and Agriculture has called the PHA “one of the most crucial demarcated agricultural land developments in the Western Cape”, pushing for its classification as Agricultural Development Zone and for an integrated agri-park it says will create 112,000 jobs and bring in R8,1-billion in revenue for the City of Cape Town.
Chairperson Beverley Schafer in August wrote to Cape Town Executive Mayor Patricia de Lille, asking her to wait for the results of the Indego study before making any decisions regarding development.
“We know that Philippi will be developed as a regional transport hub, with six proposed MyCiTi bus routes and a central station, as well as the development of an aerotropolis with proposed upgrades to Cape Town International Airport. Furthermore, the Western Cape Department of Transport and Public Works is also building major motorways in the area and connecting roads to nearby towns. This is key infrastructure to support an agri-park which Philippi is poised to become,” Schafer said.
“The development of this area as an agricultural hub is so vital because of its self-sustaining approach to farming, making sole use of water from the underground Cape aquifer and drawing no water from the city itself. It presents immense opportunity for upcoming farmers to compete with commercial farming in the province, creating an enabling environment for various agricultural industries to launch and flourish.”
Schafer is one of several officials – including the former national minister of agriculture – who have called for caution.
All this notwithstanding, the question that has remained is: why? Why that section of land, when so many influential critics have stepped up? Why that section of land, when the City of Cape Town has identified so much developable land elsewhere? Why that piece of land, on the highly effective recharge zone of the aquifer? Why, when the cost has appeared so high to so many?
As the story unfolded, it became that of a South Africa where the rainbow was all too temporary. Where the narrative of a corrupt ruling party and an opposition in shining armour was two-dimensional. Where always, the shadow of a past – and future – of disenfranchisement lurked. And at the centre of it all was the age-old symbol of security and prosperity: land. DM
Additional reporting by Sumeya Gasa.
s early as 2004, UWC hydrogeologist Professor Yongxin Xu pointed out that the Cape Flats Aquifer had the potential to provide significant water supply to the city, despite being de-prioritised. At the time, he argued
By Marelise van der Merwe & Heidi Swart
Prolonged drought potentially has two devastating long-term effects: moving underground, as it has in California, and wreaking havoc on the agricultural sector. In this second instalment of the Cape of Storms to Come series: Playing fast and loose with South Africa’s most productive horticultural area per hectare.
In the year Cape Town’s municipal water is at risk of running out, activists from the Philippi Horticultural Area Food and Farming Campaign are taking their case to the High Court, fighting for land they say is crucial to efficient use of the Cape Flats Aquifer.
For nearly a decade – and backed by 33 civil society organisations – they have been contesting two proposed developments on an area measuring some 753ha. In court, respondents will be officials from local, provincial and national government, property developers, and Heritage Western Cape.
Once part of the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA), the land is now owned by property developers. Its land use designation has been changed from agricultural to urban, despite warnings from researchers – both independent and taxpayer-funded – that development would threaten food and water security in the metropole.
The first is a proposed development by Uvest, which overlaps with a large area of highly productive farmland. One portion of this land is set to be sold to the City of Cape Town at R52-million, subject to completion of the rezoning process.
The other proposed development, Oakland City, is earmarked for an area where – according to researchers – re-absorption of water into the Cape Flats Aquifer is especially effective. This development was at the centre of an investigation by the Financial Services Board after the FSB found the land’s value had been massively inflated.
A snapshot of what is at stake: The City has warned that “Day Zero” could occur in May 2018 if consumption is not reduced to around 500m litres per day. Farmers in the Western Cape are on 50% rations. The province’s agricultural industry is staring down the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and a drought-related loss in agricultural output that would cost the economy R3.2-billion.
The Philippi Horticultural Area – described by farmers as “drought-proof” thanks to the temperate climate and easy access to groundwater – is the most productive horticultural area per hectare in the country. Studies have underlined its role in the future food security of the region.
This multi-part investigation delves into why and how one of the region’s most valuable horticultural areas and its crucial groundwater source, the Cape Flats Aquifer, have potentially been threatened in the years running up to the current disaster. This occurred despite repeated warnings from researchers that the area was important in sustaining food and water security for the rapidly growing city. This is Chapter One.
The southern edge of the Philippi Horticultural Area. Drone footage by Christiaan Serfontein
It's a kingdom of cheap rural land and potential mega-profits where…R36-million of farmland is now worth R890-million and, if the city gets its way, 1,000 hectares of construction.
– Susanna Coleman,
PHA Food and Farming Campaign
Horticultural Area, a globally unique horticultural area spanning 2090ha (20.8km2). It’s an oasis in a surrounding area that sees the highest level of gang violence in South Africa. Nyanga, its nearest neighbour, has held the dubious title of murder capital of the country for years. Just weeks before publishing, Philippi East suffered two mass killings in a week, a level of violence that saw the national Police Minister intervening under pressure from citizens.
The Cape Flats Aquifer (CFA), for its part, spans several hundred square kilometres, stretching from False Bay in the south all the way to Tygerberg Hills in the north-east, and Milnerton in the north-west. Much of it is covered by urban development after thousands of people were forced to move to the Cape Flats under the Group Areas Act in the 1950s. This was done despite the apartheid government’s full knowledge that the homes built there would have a short lifespan due to the high water table. Many homes are damp, flooding in winter.
Philippi’s story is, in many ways, the story of South Africa’s past, and its future. And the story of what’s shifting as we adjust to the New Normal.
The PHA has been farmed since the 1870s, when German settlers arrived to face the unenviable task of taming the sand dunes to produce food for the colony. The area is still a significant part of South Africa’s remaining 14-million hectares of arable land, described as Cape Town’s bread basket.
There are several types of farms in the area: large, commercial farms, often run by descendants of the German settlers dating back to the 1800s; small-scale or subsistence farms that provide fruit, vegetables and flowers both to large supermarket chains and to small businesses across the Western Cape; and then there are those who won farms in land claims.
Drive in during harvest time and you will see farmworkers picking lettuces and cabbages on the side of the main road, cars whizzing past them. Several thousand farmworkers are employed in the PHA. The area provides an estimated 3,760 jobs in horticulture alone, primarily to unskilled women. Research has estimated it to deliver as much as 80% of the metropole’s vegetables, and over 50 kinds of crops, including flowers.
This is particularly useful since most of the inhabitants living nearby are poor. Food insecurity in the metropole is a real problem – nearly three-quarters of low-income households have been estimated to be food insecure. This threat has increased in 2017, with drought and an invasion of army worms across the Western Cape.
The Western Cape, in fact, produces over 50% of the country’s agricultural exports, and is expecting further declines in production and job opportunities. In October 2017, COGTA predicted civil unrest and the loss of another 50,000 jobs in farming due to the drought. R40-million had already been lost in agricultural workers’ wages.
For the PHA, the proximity of the farms to urban areas also means food transport costs are kept to a minimum – a necessary consideration, where drought has driven prices up overall. And so, both independent research and research commissioned by local government has learned that the PHA is potentially crucial to the future food security of the city – particularly the city’s poorest, but also its middle-class and wealthier citizens.
n the heart of the Cape Flats, just a 20-minute drive from the Cape Town city centre, lies the Philippi
Recommendations of the Philippi Horticultural Area Task Team, the City is warned that Cape Town is facing a serious shortage of agricultural land. “Urban agriculture is a component within the urban planning processes that… can assist in addressing a variety of the urban planning and developmental challenges,” the report notes. “Applying the internationally recognised norm of 0.4 hectares of arable land to feed a person, the food needs for Cape Town, given the 2006 population figure of 3,240,000, require 1.3-million hectares to sustain its population, or 9.2% of South Africa’s arable land.” It adds: “What are the implications for a city with a projected population of 4,554,636 by 2020?”1
n a commissioned report to the City’s Planning and Environment Portfolio Committee in 2009, titled
1 Future Studies Data US.
Activists are contesting the removal of 753ha of land from the PHA.
Video by Jason Norwood-Young.
Similar concerns are being raised elsewhere too. Shortly before publishing this report, ParlyBeat reported that government's plan to improve food security throughout South Africa would cost an already strained budget another R86-billion over the next five years. The biggest cost driver would be increasing food production - particularly by svmallholder farmers - and improving access to nutritious, affordable food.
In Cape Town and the surrounds, drought and a quickly growing population have underlined the issue's importance. At the 2011 Census, Cape Town’s population had grown to 3,74-million. At the time of writing this report, farmers in the Cape were on 50% water rations.
The warnings issued to the City by its own task team in 2009 were not the last. Since then the city has been repeatedly advised – through studies it commissioned and ostensibly disregarded – to preserve the PHA, and to put in place a proper management plan for the area before allowing rezoning and development there. In the meantime, there was other land available to meet the city’s housing needs. In 2010, the City’s own research found that there was up to 11,000ha of land available for development within the metropole’s urban edge.
For the PHA, the aquifer is a buffer against drought, and has served as a sustainable water source for the farms for decades. It allows farming year-round. This contributes to making the PHA the most productive horticultural area in the country per hectare. The farms produce an estimated 100,000 tonnes of vegetables annually, including 2,000 tonnes for poor families – a remarkable asset for a city with a growing population.
Nonetheless, the PHA is shrinking. This didn’t occur overnight, but it is speeding up. In 1988, under apartheid rule, a document setting out land use designation in Cape Town allowed for the PHA to be used for horticulture, silica and sand mining. Originally just over 3,400ha in size, the area has since lost not only 753ha which now lie on its southern border, but also three other tracts of land.
One of these is the Schaapkraal smallholdings area, a 160ha strip of land along the western boundary of the PHA. The 4,000m2 of land in Schaapkraal is divided into 140 smallholdings. Of these, 41 are used for construction and transport – whereas only eight were used for this purpose in 1992. Today, only four are used exclusively for horticulture.
The second piece of land excised from the horticultural area was the Weltevreden Wedge, a 231ha land segment running all the way along the PHA’s eastern border. In the south, the Wedge is still being farmed, but dumping and informal settlements in the area pose a threat. Both the Schaapkraal smallholdings area and the Weltevreden Wedge have been designated for urban development.
The Lansdowne Industrial area is the third piece of land lost to non-conforming land uses, with 176ha excised from the PHA. As the name suggests, it is now an industrial zone.
In recent years, the re-designation of the above-mentioned land – around 1,320ha – for urban development effectively reduced the agriculturally designated land by a third. Processes are under way to develop sections of this land, including the 753ha that lie on the southern border. Of this 753ha, 281ha used to form the south-western corner of the PHA, and 472ha once made up the south-eastern corner. These two tracts are now earmarked for two separate developments: Uvest and Oakland City.
Groundwater, farming and development
According to hydrogeologist and groundwater expert Roger Parsons, the groundwater resources of the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA) are unique and form the backbone of the agricultural activities in the area. Without them, the PHA would simply not have developed. Further, he argued against housing in the area and called for further study on water use.
Says Parsons, “It is estimated about 15 to 20 million cubic metres (MCM) is abstracted each year from both boreholes and shallow open pits (suigputte). This is about 3 to 4 times more than abstracted from the Atlantis Aquifer and about the same volume abstracted in the Hex River Valley.
“In contrast to Atlantis which has been well researched and properly monitored over the past 25 years, the City of Cape Town has not allocated any resources to understand, manage or monitor the invaluable groundwater resources on which the PHA is dependent…it is timeous to reassess groundwater use in the area and adoption of a formal aquifer management program.” - Extract from a 2009 study by Roger Parsons, pp 278 – 283
Cave and Weaver (2000) were commissioned to investigate the feasibility of using stormwater run-off to artificially recharge the aquifer. This study related to the management of stormwater rather than the groundwater resource. According to Parsons, a key recommendation of the study was ignored and never implemented: “. . . a full investigation of the use of groundwater in the Philippi Horticultural Area [must] be conducted as a matter of urgency to protect the groundwater resources.”
“While Cave and Weaver (2000) did refer to the risk of groundwater mining, at no point did they conclude that the groundwater resources were being used unsustainably. They also did not conclude that horticultural activities had impacted the aquifer,” Parsons noted in his report to the city’s Planning and Environment Portfolio Committee on development of the PHA, 2009.
According to Parsons’ report, those wishing to develop the 472ha, which at the time comprised the south-eastern corner of the PHA, misinformed the city. “The reports by Agri Informatics (April 2008) and Urban Dynamics (July 2008) provide misinformation relating to groundwater; and incorrectly interpreted or selectively included information to support their position. Through the addition of adjectives and unquantified terms they create the impression that horticultural activities have impacted the aquifer. This…is simply without foundation [and] the City has shown no real interest to formally use the Cape Flats Aquifer – the most productive part of which is covered by low cost housing and unserviced informal settlements. Further, if the groundwater is being used unsustainably, then water supplies to the area can be augmented from the two nearby sewage works.” Parsons also slammed Agri Informatics and Urban Dynamics as being biased, and not considering the impacts of the proposed housing developments on the aquifer. He added: “From a groundwater perspective, both reports lack scientific credibility and objectivity; and all statements relating to groundwater should be treated with caution.”
Parsons’ assessment of proposed development on the PHA: “Groundwater resources have been used as a source of irrigation water in the PHA for many years…Groundwater continues to be used as the source of water for irrigation…No evidence exists that horticultural activities have significantly impaired or polluted the underlying aquifer. However, localised impacts caused by wastewater treatment works, waste disposal, septic tanks, animal feedlots and husbandry have been previously documented. The poor-quality groundwater observed in the northern part of the PHA is natural, and relates to the geology in that particular area. The argument that groundwater abstraction will induce saline intrusion is not relevant under the current circumstances. At best, it is conceptual speculation…the availability of water for irrigation in the PHA is a strong motivation for the continuation of the current land use.”
He added, lastly, that the land was not ideal to build houses on: “As a characteristic of the Cape Flats, the shallow groundwater level rising to the surface in winter is a development constraint. The winter groundwater level must be measured and monitored before development takes place if winter flooding and damp problems are to be avoided. Proper assessment should be a requirement before any development plans are submitted for consideration…The concept of aquifer protection zoning which is mentioned in the PEPCO report requires further consideration. Should the area be developed - or partially developed - for housing, then it is likely the ~ 20 MCM/a currently abstracted from the aquifer will no longer happen; and use of the aquifer and its water resources will decrease significantly. Potable water required for housing will have to be met from other sources.”
potential farmland that – in their words – is virtually “drought-proof”. And they don’t want the two tracts of land in the south to be developed, although technically speaking, these are no longer part of the PHA.
They are calling for the protection of the excised land because two-thirds of Uvest’s 281ha include productive farmland. But that’s not their only reason. The 472ha earmarked for Oakland City, never farmed and covered in sand dunes, have another important role to play: the aquifer needs land as much as the land needs it. The aquifer is replenished – or recharged – when rain water filters through the soil.
After decades of urban and industrial development above it, the CFA has few natural recharge zones left. Its water is increasingly polluted. Its best hope lies in natural rehabilitation – immediate halting of contamination, and investing in bio-remediation options such as canals and wetland restoration. (Bio-remediation is a process whereby wetlands – man-made, or natural such as those found in the PHA – are used to cleanse the water.) The PHA is the largest remaining aquifer recharge zone not covered in bricks and mortar, and has been identified as the largest high-potential bio-remediation site for the aquifer. More specifically, the 472ha earmarked for residential development has been identified as a particularly important recharge zone, because of the relatively high rate of water absorption there.
With proper planning and management, even local activists acknowledge some development need not be a death knell for the Cape Flats Aquifer and farming in PHA. However, it is unclear what consequences residential developments atop the 753ha bordering the south of the PHA will hold for the city’s food and water security. Still, the city councillors responsible for deciding the fate of the 753ha have all but ignored consistent warnings from independent researchers – and fellow officials – not to allow the development or, at the very least, to perform more comprehensive assessments before paving over the land. Yet the stage is set to use the land for housing complexes, a mini-city, and mining for silica sand. That could have dire effects for the PHA.
ctivists from the PHA Food and Farming Campaign are fighting for the protection of both existing and
Nazeer Sonday and his children at their home in Philippi. Photo by Sumeya Gasa.
development in the area for close to a decade – are taking decisive legal action. Nazeer Sonday, who spearheads the Philippi Food and Farming Campaign, is an organic farmer in the area; one of a growing number of smallholder farmers providing some three-quarters of the food consumed across the developing world.
Mayor Patricia de Lille told Daily Maverick Chronicle that Sonday’s development proposal for the PHA, which he attempted to present to the City but was prevented from completing, was something (that) “they wanted to sell to the City to make money, and we stopped the presentation because that is not how the City’s procurement processes work”.
But in a final affidavit submitted to the High Court in September, applicants Sonday and the PHA Campaign maintain local government officials and property developers jeopardised food security, water and a unique and irreplaceable agricultural asset, and failed to follow due process doing so. Now, they say the future of thousands of agricultural workers rests on the case’s outcome.
urrently, community activists who live, farm and work in the PHA – and who have been opposing
We have created jobs, built relationships in the local community. We have established ourselves here. It is picking up momentum.
– Achmat Brinkhuis
Video by Sumeya Gasa.
stables, stationed awkwardly between a few popular illegal dumping sites. The illegal dumping, Achmat says, is a story on its own. DA Western Cape Spokesperson on Economic Opportunities, Tourism, and Agriculture Beverley Schafer2 has warned that dumping contaminates the aquifer, calling for a crackdown. It remains a problem.
Today, Brinkhuis’s land, at least, is unrecognisable. The scent of fresh dhania, or coriander, drifts all the way down the drive. It’s rained unexpectedly, so there’s an impromptu production line, following a frantic call from one of the province’s top supermarket chains. They must stock the shelves with ready-made soup packs.
hen Achmat Brinkhuis bought his property on the PHA, there was next to nothing there – just a few
In 2002, less than 10 years after the end of apartheid, South Africa was straddling the line between honeymoon and disillusionment. Achmat and his family fell somewhere along that line. “We moved from the local township,” he recalls. “The area that we resided in, there were a lot of gangsters. Shooting and stuff. And then my wife and I said, ‘Look, we need to get the boys out of this area, otherwise they're gonna end up…’" He trails off.
“Because already they were getting there. They could tell us, 'That's a shotgun, that is this, and that is that.'” The Brinkhuises found the vacant plot and saw its potential. Achmat’s late father was a builder and taught his sons a thing or two. Today, Achmat is still building on the farm.
“I felt like a millionaire at the time,” he says. “Now, it’s 20 times the size. I don’t go to gym. I walk across it.”
Brinkhuis and his family were part of a new generation of rising entrepreneurs, successful first-generation farmers in one of the Western Cape’s most fertile horticultural areas. They began with dhania, then moved on to chillies, which were to supply a local producer of atchar. The first crop nearly went to waste. The client wanted dry red chillies, not fresh green ones. But Brinkhuis’s wife stumbled on a place called Freshmark in Kraaifontein and suggested they give them a call. The couple had no idea who Freshmark was – the procurement agent for Shoprite and Checkers.
“We arrived there,” relates Brinkhuis, “and tables were laid out and we thought there was some mistake. We said to them carry on, we can come back if there is a function. They laughed, they said: ‘The function is for you guys!’ We were the first people of colour to supply them. They were waiting for us.” Freshmark took all their chillies and enrolled them in a planting programme. They began with 100 bunches of dhania a week; today they produce 1,000 bunches per day.
They bought chickens, too, because when one has six sons, and later a daughter, it helps to have a supply of eggs. First they had 20 chickens, then 40, then 400, then 4,000. Today they have 10,000 birds and supply Pick n Pay with eggs.
Their farm drew media attention. Their success wasn’t just individual, it was emblematic. It gave hope. There’s still a little conflict, Brinkhuis laughs, because he’s supplying competitors, but that will work out. Brinkhuis’s sons and the breadwinners of some 17 families all work on his farm.
“We have created jobs, built relationships in the local community. We have established ourselves here. It is picking up momentum.”
The farmers in the Philippi Horticultural Area supply both major retailers and numerous small business owners.
But in one of the great ironies of democratic South Africa, Brinkhuis and several of his neighbours are facing, sometimes for the second time in their lives, an exit they did not choose.
“It doesn’t matter whether you destroy the aquifer by drying it up in the south, or digging a 30-metre gat. Every farmer will be affected.”
The Western Cape, widely hailed as one of the country’s better-run provinces post-apartheid, is coming under increasing pressure for access to resources as its population skyrockets. And like all battles, this one has not come without its share of casualties.
Farmers do not have to face direct evictions to face the potential loss of their farms, they say. They run their farms on aquifer water via boreholes and well points. “It doesn’t matter whether you destroy the aquifer by drying it up in the south, or digging a 30-metre gat into it in the north for Consol silica sand mining,” says
PHA Food and Farming Campaign activist Susanna Coleman. “Every farmer will be affected.”
On Achmat’s car is scrawled a permanent message: If God is with us, who can be against us?
Quite a few people, he says.
“If the drought and the weather are not enough, the City Council wants to come and develop on a piece of land that has the most important resource that you need and you ask yourself – how do these people think, man?” Brinkhuis asks.
“When people mess with your livelihood,” he says, “it becomes personal.”
*
At present, the urban development on the 753ha that once formed the southern part of the PHA appears to be a foregone conclusion. Some seven years of fighting later, the activists are losing. The PHA Campaign lost its appeal against the rezoning of the 472ha bordering the south-eastern corner. The high-potential aquifer recharge zone is now set to become a miniature town – Oaklands City.
In July 2017, spokesperson for the House in the City, Mersini Iakovidis, firmly shut the door on further communication regarding the Oaklands City rezone. The PHA campaign’s appeal was rejected, and Iakovidis added: “This concludes our correspondence with the media on this matter.”
Speaker Dirk Smit, in his capacity as chairperson of the General Appeals Committee, said the applicants and objectors were informed of the decision late in June. The reasons included that the proposed development “align(ed) with the principles in, and contribute(d) to, achieving objectives set out in the Integrated Development Plan, Economic Growth Strategy and Social Development Strategy.” He added that the property was located within the Urban Edge – in other words, no longer part of the Philippi Horticultural Area in terms of planning law. He didn’t mention that this was part of the dispute.
[Philippi] presents immense opportunity for upcoming farmers to compete with commercial farming in the province, creating an enabling environment for various agricultural industries to launch and flourish.
– Beverley Schäfer
had the potential to provide significant water supply to the city, despite being de-prioritised. At the time, he argued money should be poured into researching the Cape Flats’ groundwater to prevent pollution, given its potential. “We have to re-evaluate the Cape Flats,” he said. “It is very important.”
Experts differ on the potential yield of the CFA, though they agree it is an important water resource. Winter told Daily Maverick Chronicle it could ultimately yield up to 30% of Cape Town’s potable water needs. Although it would take time to build this infrastructure; its immediate yield was smaller, around 5%. He added that the CFA was unusual in the combination of its size, location, and – unlike the Table Mountain Aquifer – being an unconfined aquifer. Unconfined aquifers have a faster recharge rate, and in the case of the CFA, the water is easily accessible. “Almost twice as much water as we use in the city falls on the CFA,” Winter said, though this exceeds the usable yield. “It's a massive reservoir, and an important reservoir, because of its ability to hold that water underground, to protect that water, and there’s also an ability to filter that water – to clean it up to some extent.” Water can also be extracted at multiple points on the CFA, in contrast to a confined aquifer, where abstraction can only occur at certain points. “At no more than 15 or 20m in most parts of the CFA, you can have a fairly sustainable, year-long water resource,” he said.
Xu, who was also on a United Nations' environmental programme (Unep) team involved in studying under-groundwater in African cities, argued that conservative estimates held 20-million/m³ of water per year was available under the Flats. The Cape had a water shortage of about 4-million/m³ at the time.
In the preliminary phase of the Table Mountain Group aquifer project, earth sciences consultancy Umvoto wrote a risk report informing the City of Cape Town it would be necessary to diversify water supply. It presented similar findings at the International Conference on groundwater in 2011.
In 2005, Morris argued the Cape Flats Aquifer could yield enough water to provide 55 litres per day per person for around 500,000 people living in informal areas near it – well above the average of nine litres per day those residents were using then. Both he and Winter have argued that channelling the CFA as a water resource can reduce the danger of flooding for residents every winter, improving living conditions.
“I know there is a certain amount of monitoring done, but I don’t think it’s proactive enough, and there is little knowledge of use patterns,” Morris said.
Groundwater researchers have criticised the delay in implementing groundwater resources, but more specifically, raised concerns that bringing them online in a rush would mean the solutions weren’t sustainable. As outlined in part 1 of Cape of Storms to Come, it is difficult to justify expenditure on augmentation when rains are good and consumption appears under control. Now, however, water experts are concerned that boreholes are not adequately regulated, and there is a danger of over-abstraction – a critical concern when, according to the Western Cape Drought Task Team, the Western Cape is expected to have 30% less rainfall by 2050. California is dealing with this, even after the rains; a drought that has simply moved underground. This, says Dr Kevin Winter of the University of Cape Town’s Department of Environmental and Geographical Science and Future Water Institute, is “a battle the city will not be able to control”. Its best hope will be to introduce other incentives or to buy water from residents at a nominal rate who in turn would contribute their water to the municipal grid, he believes.
Morris says the CFA has been studied for close on 40 years and provided Daily Maverick Chronicle with reports dating back to the 1980s. “Abstraction boreholes should have been installed in the 1990s when the first major warnings were made,” he added, referring to further reports. “The CFA can be developed fairly quickly, but we must get the bureaucrats out of the programme and avoid the red tape, and let the scientists get on with the work.” The latter is easier said than done, however, given a range of legal requirements at various government levels.
Activists’ primary bugbear is that over the last decade, with Cape Town’s municipal water running critically low, the City has all but ignored repeated warnings to protect the PHA, which they say can potentially jeopardise both water quality and nearby farmers’ access to water. Meanwhile, drought and the resulting impact on agriculture in the province have become far more serious.
Researchers, and even the activists themselves, acknowledge that development need not spell disaster, if it is managed correctly. But they caution against a rushed approach and argue for rehabilitation to be part of the strategy.
“We are too critical of development,” Morris told Daily Maverick Chronicle. “(It) can be beneficial if integrated with urban farming, recreational and groundwater infiltration plots, where stormwater is channelled to semi-artificially recharge the aquifer. (But) as it is, the Philippi Horticultural Area is not well managed.” Morris argues for research into groundwater-friendly initiatives in the area. The City has, it says, considered stormwater management and artificial aquifer recharge as part of its longer-term augmentation schemes. But this does not solve the farmers' immediate problem of shrinking high-potential land.
Properly planned housing, urban farming and an environmental slant should be considered, Morris said, echoing the recommendations of Umvoto. But this will be costly. Several years ago, a site assessment by Morris to rehabilitate one farm overrun by building rubble would have cost R4-million.
Morris is not alone in proposing this approach. At the time of writing, the PHA Campaign was awaiting both its scheduled court appearance and the outcome of a six-month impact study by consulting firm Indego. Meanwhile the Standing Committee on Economic Opportunities, Tourism, and Agriculture has called the PHA “one of the most crucial demarcated agricultural land developments in the Western Cape”, pushing for its classification as Agricultural Development Zone and for an integrated agri-park it says will create 112,000 jobs and bring in R8,1-billion in revenue for the City of Cape Town.
Chairperson Beverley Schafer in August wrote to Cape Town Executive Mayor Patricia de Lille, asking her to wait for the results of the Indego study before making any decisions regarding development.
“We know that Philippi will be developed as a regional transport hub, with six proposed MyCiTi bus routes and a central station, as well as the development of an aerotropolis with proposed upgrades to Cape Town International Airport. Furthermore, the Western Cape Department of Transport and Public Works is also building major motorways in the area and connecting roads to nearby towns. This is key infrastructure to support an agri-park which Philippi is poised to become,” Schafer said.
“The development of this area as an agricultural hub is so vital because of its self-sustaining approach to farming, making sole use of water from the underground Cape aquifer and drawing no water from the city itself. It presents immense opportunity for upcoming farmers to compete with commercial farming in the province, creating an enabling environment for various agricultural industries to launch and flourish.”
Schafer is one of several officials – including the former national minister of agriculture – who have called for caution.
All this notwithstanding, the question that has remained is: why? Why that section of land, when so many influential critics have stepped up? Why that section of land, when the City of Cape Town has identified so much developable land elsewhere? Why that piece of land, on the highly effective recharge zone of the aquifer? Why, when the cost has appeared so high to so many?
As the story unfolded, it became that of a South Africa where the rainbow was all too temporary. Where the narrative of a corrupt ruling party and an opposition in shining armour was two-dimensional. Where always, the shadow of a past – and future – of disenfranchisement lurked. And at the centre of it all was the age-old symbol of security and prosperity: land. DM
Additional reporting by Sumeya Gasa.
s early as 2004, UWC hydrogeologist Professor Yongxin Xu pointed out that the Cape Flats Aquifer
By Marelise van der Merwe & Heidi Swart
Prolonged drought potentially has two devastating long-term effects: moving underground, as it has in California, and wreaking havoc on the agricultural sector. In this second instalment of the Cape of Storms to Come series: Playing fast and loose with South Africa’s most productive horticultural area per hectare.
In the year Cape Town’s municipal water is at risk of running out, activists from the Philippi Horticultural Area Food and Farming Campaign are taking their case to the High Court, fighting for land they say is crucial to efficient use of the Cape Flats Aquifer.
For nearly a decade – and backed by 33 civil society organisations – they have been contesting two proposed developments on an area measuring some 753ha. In court, respondents will be officials from local, provincial and national government, property developers, and Heritage Western Cape.
Once part of the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA), the land is now owned by property developers. Its land use designation has been changed from agricultural to urban, despite warnings from researchers – both independent and taxpayer-funded – that development would threaten food and water security in the metropole.
The first is a proposed development by Uvest, which overlaps with a large area of highly productive farmland. One portion of this land is set to be sold to the City of Cape Town at R52-million, subject to completion of the rezoning process.
The other proposed development, Oakland City, is earmarked for an area where – according to researchers – re-absorption of water into the Cape Flats Aquifer is especially effective. This development was at the centre of an investigation by the Financial Services Board after the FSB found the land’s value had been massively inflated.
A snapshot of what is at stake: The City has warned that “Day Zero” could occur in May 2018 if consumption is not reduced to around 500m litres per day. Farmers in the Western Cape are on 50% rations. The province’s agricultural industry is staring down the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and a drought-related loss in agricultural output that would cost the economy R3.2-billion.
The Philippi Horticultural Area – described by farmers as “drought-proof” thanks to the temperate climate and easy access to groundwater – is the most productive horticultural area per hectare in the country. Studies have underlined its role in the future food security of the region.
This multi-part investigation delves into why and how one of the region’s most valuable horticultural areas and its crucial groundwater source, the Cape Flats Aquifer, have potentially been threatened in the years running up to the current disaster. This occurred despite repeated warnings from researchers that the area was important in sustaining food and water security for the rapidly growing city. This is Chapter One.
The southern edge of the Philippi Horticultural Area.
Drone footage by Christiaan Serfontein
It's a kingdom of cheap rural land and potential mega-profits where…R36-million of farmland is now worth R890-million and, if the city gets its way, 1,000 hectares of construction.
– Susanna Coleman,
PHA Food and Farming Campaign
centre, lies the Philippi Horticultural Area, a globally unique horticultural area spanning 2090ha (20.8km2). It’s an oasis in a surrounding area that sees the highest level of gang violence in South Africa. Nyanga, its nearest neighbour, has held the dubious title of murder capital of the country for years. Just weeks before publishing, Philippi East suffered two mass killings in a week, a level of violence that saw the national Police Minister intervening under pressure from citizens.
The Cape Flats Aquifer (CFA), for its part, spans several hundred square kilometres, stretching from False Bay in the south all the way to Tygerberg Hills in the north-east, and Milnerton in the north-west. Much of it is covered by urban development after thousands of people were forced to move to the Cape Flats under the Group Areas Act in the 1950s. This was done despite the apartheid government’s full knowledge that the homes built there would have a short lifespan due to the high water table. Many homes are damp, flooding in winter.
Philippi’s story is, in many ways, the story of South Africa’s past, and its future. And the story of what’s shifting as we adjust to the New Normal.
The PHA has been farmed since the 1870s, when German settlers arrived to face the unenviable task of taming the sand dunes to produce food for the colony. The area is still a significant part of South Africa’s remaining 14-million hectares of arable land, described as Cape Town’s bread basket.
There are several types of farms in the area: large, commercial farms, often run by descendants of the German settlers dating back to the 1800s; small-scale or subsistence farms that provide fruit, vegetables and flowers both to large supermarket chains and to small businesses across the Western Cape; and then there are those who won farms in land claims.
Drive in during harvest time and you will see farmworkers picking lettuces and cabbages on the side of the main road, cars whizzing past them. Several thousand farmworkers are employed in the PHA. The area provides an estimated 3,760 jobs in horticulture alone, primarily to unskilled women. Research has estimated it to deliver as much as 80% of the metropole’s vegetables, and over 50 kinds of crops, including flowers.
This is particularly useful since most of the inhabitants living nearby are poor. Food insecurity in the metropole is a real problem – nearly three-quarters of low-income households have been estimated to be food insecure. This threat has increased in 2017, with drought and an invasion of army worms across the Western Cape.
The Western Cape, in fact, produces over 50% of the country’s agricultural exports, and is expecting further declines in production and job opportunities. In October 2017, COGTA predicted civil unrest and the loss of another 50,000 jobs in farming due to the drought. R40-million had already been lost in agricultural workers’ wages.
For the PHA, the proximity of the farms to urban areas also means food transport costs are kept to a minimum – a necessary consideration, where drought has driven prices up overall. And so, both independent research and research commissioned by local government has learned that the PHA is potentially crucial to the future food security of the city – particularly the city’s poorest, but also its middle-class and wealthier citizens.
n the heart of the Cape Flats, just a 20-minute drive from the Cape Town city
Committee in 2009, titled Recommendations of the Philippi Horticultural Area Task Team, the City is warned that Cape Town is facing a serious shortage of agricultural land. “Urban agriculture is a component within the urban planning processes that… can assist in addressing a variety of the urban planning and developmental challenges,” the report notes. “Applying the internationally recognised norm of 0.4 hectares of arable land to feed a person, the food needs for Cape Town, given the 2006 population figure of 3,240,000, require 1.3-million hectares to sustain its population, or 9.2% of South Africa’s arable land.” It adds: “What are the implications for a city with a projected population of 4,554,636 by 2020?”1
1 Future Studies Data US.
n a commissioned report to the City’s Planning and Environment Portfolio
Activists are contesting the removal of 753ha of land from the PHA.
Video by Jason Norwood-Young.
Similar concerns are being raised elsewhere too. Shortly before publishing this report, ParlyBeat reported that government's plan to improve food security throughout South Africa would cost an already strained budget another R86-billion over the next five years. The biggest cost driver would be increasing food production - particularly by smallholder farmers - and improving access to nutritious, affordable food.
In Cape Town and the surrounds, drought and a quickly growing population have underlined the issue's importance. At the 2011 Census, Cape Town’s population had grown to 3,74-million. At the time of writing this report, farmers in the Cape were on 50% water rations.
The warnings issued to the City by its own task team in 2009 were not the last. Since then the city has been repeatedly advised – through studies it commissioned and ostensibly disregarded – to preserve the PHA, and to put in place a proper management plan for the area before allowing rezoning and development there. In the meantime, there was other land available to meet the city’s housing needs. In 2010, the City’s own research found that there was up to 11,000ha of land available for development within the metropole’s urban edge.
For the PHA, the aquifer is a buffer against drought, and has served as a sustainable water source for the farms for decades. It allows farming year-round. This contributes to making the PHA the most productive horticultural area in the country per hectare. The farms produce an estimated 100,000 tonnes of vegetables annually, including 2,000 tonnes for poor families – a remarkable asset for a city with a growing population.
Nonetheless, the PHA is shrinking. This didn’t occur overnight, but it is speeding up. In 1988, under apartheid rule, a document setting out land use designation in Cape Town allowed for the PHA to be used for horticulture, silica and sand mining. Originally just over 3,400ha in size, the area has since lost not only 753ha which now lie on its southern border, but also three other tracts of land.
One of these is the Schaapkraal smallholdings area, a 160ha strip of land along the western boundary of the PHA. The 4,000m2 of land in Schaapkraal is divided into 140 smallholdings. Of these, 41 are used for construction and transport – whereas only eight were used for this purpose in 1992. Today, only four are used exclusively for horticulture.
The second piece of land excised from the horticultural area was the Weltevreden Wedge, a 231ha land segment running all the way along the PHA’s eastern border. In the south, the Wedge is still being farmed, but dumping and informal settlements in the area pose a threat. Both the Schaapkraal smallholdings area and the Weltevreden Wedge have been designated for urban development.
The Lansdowne Industrial area is the third piece of land lost to non-conforming land uses, with 176ha excised from the PHA. As the name suggests, it is now an industrial zone.
In recent years, the re-designation of the above-mentioned land – around 1,320ha – for urban development effectively reduced the agriculturally designated land by a third. Processes are under way to develop sections of this land, including the 753ha that lie on the southern border. Of this 753ha, 281ha used to form the south-western corner of the PHA, and 472ha once made up the south-eastern corner. These two tracts are now earmarked for two separate developments: Uvest and Oakland City.
Groundwater, farming and development
According to hydrogeologist and groundwater expert Roger Parsons, the groundwater resources of the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA) are unique and form the backbone of the agricultural activities in the area. Without them, the PHA would simply not have developed. Further, he argued against housing in the area and called for further study on water use.
Says Parsons, “It is estimated about 15 to 20 million cubic metres (MCM) is abstracted each year from both boreholes and shallow open pits (suigputte). This is about 3 to 4 times more than abstracted from the Atlantis Aquifer and about the same volume abstracted in the Hex River Valley.
“In contrast to Atlantis which has been well researched and properly monitored over the past 25 years, the City of Cape Town has not allocated any resources to understand, manage or monitor the invaluable groundwater resources on which the PHA is dependent…it is timeous to reassess groundwater use in the area and adoption of a formal aquifer management program.” - Extract from a 2009 study by Roger Parsons, pp 278 – 283
Cave and Weaver (2000) were commissioned to investigate the feasibility of using stormwater run-off to artificially recharge the aquifer. This study related to the management of stormwater rather than the groundwater resource. According to Parsons, a key recommendation of the study was ignored and never implemented: “. . . a full investigation of the use of groundwater in the Philippi Horticultural Area [must] be conducted as a matter of urgency to protect the groundwater resources.”
“While Cave and Weaver (2000) did refer to the risk of groundwater mining, at no point did they conclude that the groundwater resources were being used unsustainably. They also did not conclude that horticultural activities had impacted the aquifer,” Parsons noted in his report to the city’s Planning and Environment Portfolio Committee on development of the PHA, 2009.
According to Parsons’ report, those wishing to develop the 472ha, which at the time comprised the south-eastern corner of the PHA, misinformed the city. “The reports by Agri Informatics (April 2008) and Urban Dynamics (July 2008) provide misinformation relating to groundwater; and incorrectly interpreted or selectively included information to support their position. Through the addition of adjectives and unquantified terms they create the impression that horticultural activities have impacted the aquifer. This…is simply without foundation [and] the City has shown no real interest to formally use the Cape Flats Aquifer – the most productive part of which is covered by low cost housing and unserviced informal settlements. Further, if the groundwater is being used unsustainably, then water supplies to the area can be augmented from the two nearby sewage works.” Parsons also slammed Agri Informatics and Urban Dynamics as being biased, and not considering the impacts of the proposed housing developments on the aquifer. He added: “From a groundwater perspective, both reports lack scientific credibility and objectivity; and all statements relating to groundwater should be treated with caution.”
Parsons’ assessment of proposed development on the PHA: “Groundwater resources have been used as a source of irrigation water in the PHA for many years…Groundwater continues to be used as the source of water for irrigation…No evidence exists that horticultural activities have significantly impaired or polluted the underlying aquifer. However, localised impacts caused by wastewater treatment works, waste disposal, septic tanks, animal feedlots and husbandry have been previously documented. The poor-quality groundwater observed in the northern part of the PHA is natural, and relates to the geology in that particular area. The argument that groundwater abstraction will induce saline intrusion is not relevant under the current circumstances. At best, it is conceptual speculation…the availability of water for irrigation in the PHA is a strong motivation for the continuation of the current land use.”
He added, lastly, that the land was not ideal to build houses on: “As a characteristic of the Cape Flats, the shallow groundwater level rising to the surface in winter is a development constraint. The winter groundwater level must be measured and monitored before development takes place if winter flooding and damp problems are to be avoided. Proper assessment should be a requirement before any development plans are submitted for consideration…The concept of aquifer protection zoning which is mentioned in the PEPCO report requires further consideration. Should the area be developed - or partially developed - for housing, then it is likely the ~ 20 MCM/a currently abstracted from the aquifer will no longer happen; and use of the aquifer and its water resources will decrease significantly. Potable water required for housing will have to be met from other sources.”
of both existing and potential farmland that – in their words – is virtually “drought-proof”. And they don’t want the two tracts of land in the south to be developed, although technically speaking, these are no longer part of the PHA. They are calling for the protection of the excised land because two-thirds of Uvest’s 281ha include productive farmland. But that’s not their only reason. The 472ha earmarked for Oakland City, never farmed and covered in sand dunes, have another important role to play: the aquifer needs land as much as the land needs it. The aquifer is replenished – or recharged – when rain water filters through the soil.
After decades of urban and industrial development above it, the CFA has few natural recharge zones left. Its water is increasingly polluted. Its best hope lies in natural rehabilitation – immediate halting of contamination, and investing in bio-remediation options such as canals and wetland restoration. (Bio-remediation is a process whereby wetlands – man-made, or natural such as those found in the PHA – are used to cleanse the water.) The PHA is the largest remaining aquifer recharge zone not covered in bricks and mortar, and has been identified as the largest high-potential bio-remediation site for the aquifer. More specifically, the 472ha earmarked for residential development has been identified as a particularly important recharge zone, because of the relatively high rate of water absorption there.
With proper planning and management, even local activists acknowledge some development need not be a death knell for the Cape Flats Aquifer and farming in PHA. However, it is unclear what consequences residential developments atop the 753ha bordering the south of the PHA will hold for the city’s food and water security. Still, the city councillors responsible for deciding the fate of the 753ha have all but ignored consistent warnings from independent researchers – and fellow officials – not to allow the development or, at the very least, to perform more comprehensive assessments before paving over the land. Yet the stage is set to use the land for housing complexes, a mini-city, and mining for silica sand. That could have dire effects for the PHA.
ctivists from the PHA Food and Farming Campaign are fighting for the protection
Nazeer Sonday and his children at their home in Philippi.
Photo by Sumeya Gasa.
have been opposing development in the area for close to a decade – are taking decisive legal action. Nazeer Sonday, who spearheads the Philippi Food and Farming Campaign, is an organic farmer in the area; one of a growing number of smallholder farmers providing some three-quarters of the food consumed across the developing world.
Mayor Patricia de Lille told Daily Maverick Chronicle that Sonday’s development proposal for the PHA, which he attempted to present to the City but was prevented from completing, was something (that) “they wanted to sell to the City to make money, and we stopped the presentation because that is not how the City’s procurement processes work”.
But in a final affidavit submitted to the High Court in September, applicants Sonday and the PHA Campaign maintain local government officials and property developers jeopardised food security, water and a unique and irreplaceable agricultural asset, and failed to follow due process doing so. Now, they say the future of thousands of agricultural workers rests on the case’s outcome.
urrently, community activists who live, farm and work in the PHA – and who
We have created jobs, built relationships in the local community. We have established ourselves here. It is picking up momentum.
– Achmat Brinkhuis
nothing there – just a few stables, stationed awkwardly between a few popular illegal dumping sites. The illegal dumping, Achmat says, is a story on its own. DA Western Cape Spokesperson on Economic Opportunities, Tourism, and Agriculture Beverley Schafer2 has warned that dumping contaminates the aquifer, calling for a crackdown. It remains a problem.
Today, Brinkhuis’s land, at least, is unrecognisable. The scent of fresh dhania, or coriander, drifts all the way down the drive. It’s rained unexpectedly, so there’s an impromptu production line, following a frantic call from one of the province’s top supermarket chains. They must stock the shelves with ready-made soup packs.
hen Achmat Brinkhuis bought his property on the PHA, there was next to
In 2002, less than 10 years after the end of apartheid, South Africa was straddling the line between honeymoon and disillusionment. Achmat and his family fell somewhere along that line. “We moved from the local township,” he recalls. “The area that we resided in, there were a lot of gangsters. Shooting and stuff. And then my wife and I said, ‘Look, we need to get the boys out of this area, otherwise they're gonna end up…’" He trails off.
“Because already they were getting there. They could tell us, 'That's a shotgun, that is this, and that is that.'” The Brinkhuises found the vacant plot and saw its potential. Achmat’s late father was a builder and taught his sons a thing or two. Today, Achmat is still building on the farm.
“I felt like a millionaire at the time,” he says. “Now, it’s 20 times the size. I don’t go to gym. I walk across it.”
Brinkhuis and his family were part of a new generation of rising entrepreneurs, successful first-generation farmers in one of the Western Cape’s most fertile horticultural areas. They began with dhania, then moved on to chillies, which were to supply a local producer of atchar. The first crop nearly went to waste. The client wanted dry red chillies, not fresh green ones. But Brinkhuis’s wife stumbled on a place called Freshmark in Kraaifontein and suggested they give them a call. The couple had no idea who Freshmark was – the procurement agent for Shoprite and Checkers.
“We arrived there,” relates Brinkhuis, “and tables were laid out and we thought there was some mistake. We said to them carry on, we can come back if there is a function. They laughed, they said: ‘The function is for you guys!’ We were the first people of colour to supply them. They were waiting for us.” Freshmark took all their chillies and enrolled them in a planting programme. They began with 100 bunches of dhania a week; today they produce 1,000 bunches per day.
They bought chickens, too, because when one has six sons, and later a daughter, it helps to have a supply of eggs. First they had 20 chickens, then 40, then 400, then 4,000. Today they have 10,000 birds and supply Pick n Pay with eggs.
Their farm drew media attention. Their success wasn’t just individual, it was emblematic. It gave hope. There’s still a little conflict, Brinkhuis laughs, because he’s supplying competitors, but that will work out. Brinkhuis’s sons and the breadwinners of some 17 families all work on his farm.
“We have created jobs, built relationships in the local community. We have established ourselves here. It is picking up momentum.”
The farmers in the Philippi Horticultural Area supply both major retailers and numerous small business owners.
But in one of the great ironies of democratic South Africa, Brinkhuis and several of his neighbours are facing, sometimes for the second time in their lives, an exit they did not choose.
Video by Sumeya Gasa.
“It doesn’t matter whether you destroy the aquifer by drying it up in the south, or digging a 30-metre gat. Every farmer will be affected.”
The Western Cape, widely hailed as one of the country’s better-run provinces post-apartheid, is coming under increasing pressure for access to resources as its population skyrockets. And like all battles, this one has not come without its share of casualties.
Farmers do not have to face direct evictions to face the potential loss of their farms, they say. They run their farms on aquifer water via boreholes and well points. “It doesn’t matter whether you destroy the aquifer by drying it up in the south, or digging a 30-metre gat into it in the north for Consol silica sand mining,” says PHA Food and Farming Campaign activist Susanna Coleman. “Every farmer will be affected.”
On Achmat’s car is scrawled a permanent message: If God is with us, who can be against us?
Quite a few people, he says.
“If the drought and the weather are not enough, the City Council wants to come and develop on a piece of land that has the most important resource that you need and you ask yourself – how do these people think, man?” Brinkhuis asks.
“When people mess with your livelihood,” he says, “it becomes personal.”
*
At present, the urban development on the 753ha that once formed the southern part of the PHA appears to be a foregone conclusion. Some seven years of fighting later, the activists are losing. The PHA Campaign lost its appeal against the rezoning of the 472ha bordering the south-eastern corner. The high-potential aquifer recharge zone is now set to become a miniature town – Oaklands City.
In July 2017, spokesperson for the House in the City, Mersini Iakovidis, firmly shut the door on further communication regarding the Oaklands City rezone. The PHA campaign’s appeal was rejected, and Iakovidis added: “This concludes our correspondence with the media on this matter.”
Speaker Dirk Smit, in his capacity as chairperson of the General Appeals Committee, said the applicants and objectors were informed of the decision late in June. The reasons included that the proposed development “align(ed) with the principles in, and contribute(d) to, achieving objectives set out in the Integrated Development Plan, Economic Growth Strategy and Social Development Strategy.” He added that the property was located within the Urban Edge – in other words, no longer part of the Philippi Horticultural Area in terms of planning law. He didn’t mention that this was part of the dispute.
[Philippi] presents immense opportunity for upcoming farmers to compete with commercial farming in the province, creating an enabling environment for various agricultural industries
to launch and flourish.
– Beverley Schäfer
the Cape Flats Aquifer had the potential to provide significant water supply to the city, despite being de-prioritised. At the time, he argued money should be poured into researching the Cape Flats’ groundwater to prevent pollution, given its potential. “We have to re-evaluate the Cape Flats,” he said. “It is very important.”
Experts differ on the potential yield of the CFA, though they agree it is an important water resource. Winter told Daily Maverick Chronicle it could ultimately yield up to 30% of Cape Town’s potable water needs. Although it would take time to build this infrastructure; its immediate yield was smaller, around 5%. He added that the CFA was unusual in the combination of its size, location, and – unlike the Table Mountain Aquifer – being an unconfined aquifer. Unconfined aquifers have a faster recharge rate, and in the case of the CFA, the water is easily accessible. “Almost twice as much water as we use in the city falls on the CFA,” Winter said, though this exceeds the usable yield. “It's a massive reservoir, and an important reservoir, because of its ability to hold that water underground, to protect that water, and there’s also an ability to filter that water – to clean it up to some extent.” Water can also be extracted at multiple points on the CFA, in contrast to a confined aquifer, where abstraction can only occur at certain points. “At no more than 15 or 20m in most parts of the CFA, you can have a fairly sustainable, year-long water resource,” he said.
Xu, who was also on a United Nations' environmental programme (Unep) team involved in studying under-groundwater in African cities, argued that conservative estimates held 20-million/m³ of water per year was available under the Flats. The Cape had a water shortage of about 4-million/m³ at the time.
In the preliminary phase of the Table Mountain Group aquifer project, earth sciences consultancy Umvoto wrote a risk report informing the City of Cape Town it would be necessary to diversify water supply. It presented similar findings at the International Conference on groundwater in 2011.
In 2005, Morris argued the Cape Flats Aquifer could yield enough water to provide 55 litres per day per person for around 500,000 people living in informal areas near it – well above the average of nine litres per day those residents were using then. Both he and Winter have argued that channelling the CFA as a water resource can reduce the danger of flooding for residents every winter, improving living conditions.
“I know there is a certain amount of monitoring done, but I don’t think it’s proactive enough, and there is little knowledge of use patterns,” Morris said.
Groundwater researchers have criticised the delay in implementing groundwater resources, but more specifically, raised concerns that bringing them online in a rush would mean the solutions weren’t sustainable. As outlined in part 1 of Cape of Storms to Come, it is difficult to justify expenditure on augmentation when rains are good and consumption appears under control. Now, however, water experts are concerned that boreholes are not adequately regulated, and there is a danger of over-abstraction – a critical concern when, according to the Western Cape Drought Task Team, the Western Cape is expected to have 30% less rainfall by 2050. California is dealing with this, even after the rains; a drought that has simply moved underground. This, says Dr Kevin Winter of the University of Cape Town’s Department of Environmental and Geographical Science and Future Water Institute, is “a battle the city will not be able to control”. Its best hope will be to introduce other incentives or to buy water from residents at a nominal rate who in turn would contribute their water to the municipal grid, he believes.
Morris says the CFA has been studied for close on 40 years and provided Daily Maverick Chronicle with reports dating back to the 1980s. “Abstraction boreholes should have been installed in the 1990s when the first major warnings were made,” he added, referring to further reports. “The CFA can be developed fairly quickly, but we must get the bureaucrats out of the programme and avoid the red tape, and let the scientists get on with the work.” The latter is easier said than done, however, given a range of legal requirements at various government levels.
Activists’ primary bugbear is that over the last decade, with Cape Town’s municipal water running critically low, the city has all but ignored repeated warnings to protect the PHA, which they say can potentially jeopardise both water quality and nearby farmers’ access to water. Meanwhile, drought and the resulting impact on agriculture in the province have become far more serious.
Researchers, and even the activists themselves, acknowledge that development need not spell disaster, if it is managed correctly. But they caution against a rushed approach and argue for rehabilitation to be part of the strategy.
“We are too critical of development,” Morris told Daily Maverick Chronicle. “(It) can be beneficial if integrated with urban farming, recreational and groundwater infiltration plots, where stormwater is channelled to semi-artificially recharge the aquifer. (But) as it is, the Philippi Horticultural Area is not well managed.” Morris argues for research into groundwater-friendly initiatives in the area. The City has, it says, considered stormwater management and artificial aquifer recharge as part of its longer-term augmentation schemes. But this does not solve the farmers' immediate problem of shrinking high-potential land.
Properly planned housing, urban farming and an environmental slant should be considered, Morris said, echoing the recommendations of Umvoto. But this will be costly. Several years ago, a site assessment by Morris to rehabilitate one farm overrun by building rubble would have cost R4-million.
Morris is not alone in proposing this approach. At the time of writing, the PHA Campaign was awaiting both its scheduled court appearance and the outcome of a six-month impact study by consulting firm Indego. Meanwhile the Standing Committee on Economic Opportunities, Tourism, and Agriculture has called the PHA “one of the most crucial demarcated agricultural land developments in the Western Cape”, pushing for its classification as Agricultural Development Zone and for an integrated agri-park it says will create 112,000 jobs and bring in R8,1-billion in revenue for the City of Cape Town.
Chairperson Beverley Schafer in August wrote to Cape Town Executive Mayor Patricia de Lille, asking her to wait for the results of the Indego study before making any decisions regarding development.
“We know that Philippi will be developed as a regional transport hub, with six proposed MyCiTi bus routes and a central station, as well as the development of an aerotropolis with proposed upgrades to Cape Town International Airport. Furthermore, the Western Cape Department of Transport and Public Works is also building major motorways in the area and connecting roads to nearby towns. This is key infrastructure to support an agri-park which Philippi is poised to become,” Schafer said.
“The development of this area as an agricultural hub is so vital because of its self-sustaining approach to farming, making sole use of water from the underground Cape aquifer and drawing no water from the city itself. It presents immense opportunity for upcoming farmers to compete with commercial farming in the province, creating an enabling environment for various agricultural industries to launch and flourish.”
Schafer is one of several officials – including the former national minister of agriculture – who have called for caution.
All this notwithstanding, the question that has remained is: why? Why that section of land, when so many influential critics have stepped up? Why that section of land, when the City of Cape Town has identified so much developable land elsewhere? Why that piece of land, on the highly effective recharge zone of the aquifer? Why, when the cost has appeared so high to so many?
As the story unfolded, it became that of a South Africa where the rainbow was all too temporary. Where the narrative of a corrupt ruling party and an opposition in shining armour was two-dimensional. Where always, the shadow of a past – and future – of disenfranchisement lurked. And at the centre of it all was the age-old symbol of security and prosperity: land. DM
Additional reporting by Sumeya Gasa.
s early as 2004, UWC hydrogeologist Professor Yongxin Xu pointed out that
By Marelise van der Merwe
& Heidi Swart