Prolonged drought, as raised in the previous chapter, is not only about a shortage of surface water. It carries a heavy cost for the agricultural sector. And it requires careful usage of groundwater resources. In this next instalment of the Cape of Storms to Come series: how two property developers, Uvest and Rapicorp, were handed the keys to large parts of South Africa’s most productive horticultural area per hectare – leading up to, and during, the area’s worst drought in a century. A horticultural area that happens to lie atop a massive, easily accessible aquifer.
Read the previous chapter here
Philippi is not just a horticultural area. It’s a very large part of Cape Town, spanning some 35km, and includes some of the most hotly contested wards. It also – although this is seldom mentioned – has been found to have several areas of critical heritage importance, including recent discoveries of Khoisan artefacts in the PHA.1
Overlapping are the PHA, the nearby informal settlement of Marikana – with its own contested history spanning several years – and the airport industrial area. Amid this, enterprising individuals have spotted the potential for an economic hub. With a singularly South African vision and optimism, suddenly a lot of people want a piece of Philippi.
Meanwhile, as Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille finds herself at the centre of a bitter fight over her leadership, the fight between housing – which De Lille’s supporters frame her as a champion of – and her management of the water crisis, for which she has been criticised, has come under the spotlight. And the PHA and its groundwater access, which activists say were jeopardised in favour of development
under De Lille’s watch, falls right in the middle.
Earlier in 2017, a tender went out for a study investigating a future mixed-use development on the PHA. Activists have opposed this, too. But by far the most attention has been focused on the developments discussed in the previous chapter: Oakland City, and the U-Vest land. By September 2017, the PHA Campaign was heading to the High Court after a lengthy and expensive period of appeals and applications. Campaign activist Susanna Coleman told Daily Maverick Chronicle it had cost R10,000 simply in Sheriff’s fees and to photocopy the extensive notice of motion for all 12 respondents.
1 Rooftops study, MSP Mayco report 2013
PHA farmer and activist Nazeer Sonday on his tract of land in Philippi. Photo by Sumeya Gasa.
A crash course for those unfamiliar with the basics: Long-term, there have been two contested developments south of the Philippi Horticultural area. At stake are, in total, some 753 hectares, making way for, among other things, the building of 30,000 housing units, two shopping centres, a private school, and a private prison.
Applicant Nazeer Ahmed Sonday says the campaign is not opposed to development altogether. Some of the water coming into the aquifer – particularly on the northern side – is coming through an underground system which includes polluted arteries in Epping and Athlone. “They can’t farm properly there; they have to get another water source,” he says. “They want the right to sell their land to developers. And that’s practical, actually. If we want to give up our land, let’s give it up in that area, but save our best land.”
Activists argue the developments will compromise both farmland and an area of high transmissivity for the aquifer. Graphic by Marette Koorts.
Yet the Campaign says developers have been handed the keys to the PHA unethically at the expense of food security, water security and the livelihood of the farming community, most of whom are most vulnerable in terms of unemployment: unskilled women and youth.1
The value of land is a matter of perspective. Several factors influence land value, but, in simple terms, developable land can be more expensive. According to real estate experts Daily Maverick Chronicle spoke to, this is in theory due in part to the costs associated with rezoning, but also because of the potential value associated with development. However, hydrogeologist and groundwater expert Roger Parsons writes – in a study commissioned by local government – of the relationship between land price and economic feasibility on the PHA. “Current farming operations can continue with positive cash flow, but when opportunity cost becomes too high, it inhibits new investment in land for vegetable production. Strict adherence to agricultural zoning is needed to keep land prices in line with agricultural productive value.”
Apart from objecting to the loss of prime agricultural land and associated livelihoods; the loss of food and water security; and impact on the environment; activists and researchers have also argued that a managed groundwater system would reduce the risk of flooding for residents of the largely impoverished Cape Flats, as well as alleviating strain on Cape Town’s water supply system.
The city of Cape Town allowed valuable land designated for agricultural use to be excised from the PHA's boundaries.
Many residents on the Cape Flats, after all, were relocated under the Group Areas Act. Large developments are not ideal where there is such a high water table – not if it is inadequately managed.
According to hydrogeologists, investing in a better managed system would also reduce risks of, for example, pollution through both development and agriculture, or over-abstraction using individual boreholes during a water crisis that developed due to a lack of resilient water infrastructure.2
To date, media reports have been clear on the extent of outrage surrounding the developments. What has been unclear is how the developments were approved, seemingly against all odds. And, having examined that, the question of why they were approved.
A painstaking search through the minutes of the city’s meetings and related documents, dating back almost 10 years, reveals how the City of Cape Town allowed valuable land identified as a prime catchment area of the Cape Flats Aquifer, and designated for agricultural use, to be excised from the PHA’s boundaries, paving the way for development.
When Daily Maverick Chronicle visited Achmat Brinkhuis’ farm, they were making soup packs for a local supermarket chain. Brinkhuis is an emerging farmer and provides employment to some seventeen families. Photo by Sumeya Gasa.
strong foundation for all South Africans.” According to the website of Multi Spectrum Property – the major building contractors that started the push for an urban development across 281 hectares of agriculturally designated land in the south-western corner of Philippi – it’s a dream that Roos, the company’s CEO, still holds dear to this day.
Fast forward to 26 November 2012, sixth floor of the Cape Town Civic Centre. The noon gun still reverberating, coffee still hot. Mayor Patricia de Lille, 13 council members and 15 officials from various city departments have gathered to discuss the metropole’s future. Tea trays, biscuits and neat offices aside, this meeting is serious. Because it affects people who can’t afford tea trays, biscuits and neat offices.
People like Nicky Swartz and Ennie Kiewiets from the Egoli informal settlement in the PHA. Before the councillors had their meeting, Kiewiets and Swartz told reporter Heidi Swart about the realities of going hungry. Chicken gizzards and porridge made up a normal meal, even if they weren’t lucky enough to eat it every day. Their only chance to afford a pocket of potatoes, grown on the nearby farms, was if they bought it from an informal trader who occasionally passed by in his bakkie. It was much cheaper than at Pick n Pay or Checkers – almost R10, excluding the money saved by avoiding taxi fare. Even so, it was a luxury.
Swartz and Kiewiets were just two of many people in Cape Town who could be considered food insecure. This doesn’t just mean being hungry – it’s much bigger than that, according to the World Health Organisation. Those who are food secure “have physical and economic access to sufficient and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”. If a small portion of chicken gizzards every second day is enough for you, you’re all right. If not, you’re in trouble. And many people in Cape Town are in trouble.
A 2008 study of poor households in Khayelitsha, Philippi and Ocean View found that 80% of those studied were moderately or severely food insecure. In 2011, another research study found that food insecurity in poor Cape Town neighbourhoods was “severe and chronic”3. In 2013, a survey of 2,500 households throughout the metropole found that food insecurity stood at 58%. Hardest hit were poor neighbourhoods: 95% of high-income neighbourhoods felt they had adequate nutrition for a year, but just 25% of homes in low-income areas could say the same. Yet another study in 2014 found that Cape Town “cannot be considered food secure”4. Although its impact is not yet fully understood, drought has dramatically impacted food security throughout southern Africa in recent years, with the United Nations issuing a warning early in 2017 that millions were facing starvation following reduced crop and livestock production.
fter studying marketing and sales, Riaan Roos took off with only a bakkie and his dream: “To create a
Studies have argued that food insecurity is a serious problem in Cape Town and beyond. The Philippi Horticultural Area produces over 100,000 tonnes of food annually. Graphic by Marette Koorts.
Back on the sixth floor in 2012, the first item on the day’s agenda was the future of 281 hectares in the south-western corner of the PHA, two-thirds of which was used for vegetable farming, and which city authorities had told city council members was the most productive farmland in the area.
It was also a piece of land developers were keen to use for housing projects. Developers like Riaan Roos and John Coetzee. Back in 2011, Roos’ Company, MSP, got the ball rolling towards what could spell disaster for some of Cape Town’s most disadvantaged: a plan to use that valuable food and water resource – 150 hectares for 6,000 residential units, 10 hectares commercial/retail shopping centre, 35 hectares mixed use, 6 hectares institutional (schools, churches, community facilities etc.) 47 hectares public open space, and 32 hectares of road space.
3 The State of Urban Food Insecurity in Cape Town, p35.
4 Food Systems Study p19.
5, 6 MSP Mayco report MSP Applic 26Nov2013
metropole should be changed - the Spatial Development Framework - had to be changed. The SDF showed a boundary around the PHA, declaring it “agricultural land of significant value”. The 281 hectares at stake were also designated such. Secondly, even if that land was designated for urban use, it still had to be rezoned from rural land to land that could be developed, for example a residential or commercial zone. MSP had some paperwork to do.
The Mayor and her council members were meeting to decide if they should cut the 281 hectares from the PHA, paving the way for MSP.
Unfortunately for the developers, the council members were staring down a 139-page report (compiled by city officials) recommending that the MSP land remain a horticultural area. This followed wide consultation with government on local, provincial and national level, and with the civic. It stressed that should the land be developed, not only would there be a devastating impact on food security, but on that development alone, hundreds of people would lose their employment, and that these were among “the least skilled and most vulnerable”. This report was but one of several warnings.
A previous study in 2009 (which the city commissioned and which set taxpayers back close to R200,000) was conducted by five independent researchers from various fields, including experts in urban food security, town planning, and groundwater. The research report warned that the PHA was important to the city’s food security, and that it should be preserved for horticulture.
A 2010 study by the city showed that there were up to 11,000 hectares of land elsewhere in the metropole that could be developed. By June 2012, even the National Agriculture Minister had weighed in, forbidding the city to excise the 281 hectares from the horticultural area, citing the land’s role in food security and the abundance of other developable land. September 2012 saw a direct warning from city officials, warning councillors that the PHA was a “critical resource”, specifically citing MSP’s application as a threat to the area, among others.
In that November 2012 meeting, it appeared De Lille might consider the warnings. She called for another study to better understand the long-term food security needs of the city, and the role of the PHA. The decision to excise the MSP land was placed on hold.
Yet barely six months later, a seven-page report to the executive mayor recommended that the city waste no more time in changing the land use designation of the 281 hectares to urban. The 26 November decision had to be “urgently reviewed” due to “changed information and circumstances”. 7
The changed circumstances? A need for “gap and subsidised” housing that was more urgent than assumed, due to a 37.5% increase in Cape Town’s population since 2001.
In fact, the city did have a massive housing backlog. But it wasn’t new.
Apart from the population increase having been noted over several years, originally, the MSP camp had put forward several reasons why the 281 hectares should be developed. For one, they argued, it would “address a substantial chunk of the city’s housing backlog”. At the time, the city’s housing backlog was estimated at 360,000 to 400,000 units. MSP planned to build 6,000 dwelling units, which would provide between 1.5 to 1.7% of the backlog – one that was at the time estimated to be growing at 16,000 to 18,000 annually. (The City says the current backlog is 320,000.)
In January 2014, however, MSP was temporarily stopped dead in its tracks in any case. Anton Bredell, then minister of the Provincial Department of Environmental and Development Planning (DEADP) issued a press release stating: “As the competent authority in terms of the Land Use Planning Ordinance, 1985 (LUPO), I have decided not to approve the application by MSP Developments for the proposed amendment of the City of Cape Town’s Spatial Development Framework.” In the detailed three-page release8 he outlined his reasons, which largely corresponded with other objections. For one, the area provided some of the most suitable farming conditions in the PHA: 64% of the area was productive farmland, and 20% was under cultivation. Bredell concluded that “…urban development in the PHA area should be well-placed, not depriving the area and the affected citizens of a valuable food production source.”
Yet despite this decision at provincial level, the city excised the land from the horticultural area in May 2014. Technically speaking, they were able to do this due to a change in land planning law that left the ball in the city’s court.
After the press statement was released, explained Bredell’s spokesperson, James-Brent Styan, the City of Cape Town’s spatial development framework was withdrawn as a structure plan in terms of the Land Use Planning Ordinance of 1985, and the final approval was the city’s prerogative in terms of the Municipal Systems Act.
o develop that land, two things needed to happen. First, the 20-year plan for how land in the whole
Nazeer Sonday outside the PHA Campaign headquarters , which can be seen through the wall. He has been fighting the proposed developments for around a decade.
Photo by Sumeya Gasa.
A map of Philippi and the proposed developments, seen within the PHA Campaign headquarters in Philippi. Photo by Sumeya Gasa.
Asked why the 281 hectares was excised from the PHA despite other land being available within the city (and despite hydrogeologist Parsons noting that the high water table was a “development constraint”) the city said: “Land in well-located
The city did have a massive housing backlog. But it wasn’t new.
areas in the City of Cape Town is not abundant and therefore the city needs to explore all alternatives, especially where the demand is high due to both growth and urbanisation. This land is immediately adjoining private land which has also been earmarked for housing development.”
It’s significant, given recent developments in city politics, to look back at these meeting minutes. Sources close to the city told Daily Maverick Chronicle recently of their concern that Patricia de Lille was being targeted for her pro-poor policies, which was echoed within the affidavits of Councillor Brett Herron and City Transport Commissioner Melissa Whitehead, who was recently suspended following the claimed cover-up of irregularities in which De Lille was allegedly implicated. De Lille herself was at the centre of a heated debate between those who accused her of mismanagement, and her supporters, who viewed her as a champion of the poor. Early meetings around the PHA frame environmental concerns as elitist, versus an urgent and immediate housing crisis – though those ostensibly competing needs would very soon converge. And De Lille’s management of these competing needs? Open to interpretation.
Sonday argues it would benefit the city’s poor to prioritise food security. As for that housing backlog, note it: we will return to it.
7 Council report 31 July 2013 re MSP applic
8 MSP Statement by MEC Bredell; Resource Efficient Spatial and Land-use Planning Spatial Development Framework
John Coetzee, Director of Developments at Uvest Property Group. According to the Uvest website, Coetzee has “a formidable track record in the property development arena” and has “spearheaded some of the Western Cape’s largest integrated housing projects”. These include Burgundy Estate, Buh-Rein Estate and Belladonna Estate. If you’re looking to buy a place in any of these estates, you’re looking at about R330,000 minimum for a one-bedroom in Belladonna estate or up to R3.2-million for a four-bedroom in Burgundy Estate – arguably not real estate options for those on the housing list.
Coetzee is also no stranger to Roos and MSP. Back in September 2011, he worked as managing director at Roos’ MSP developments.
By 2015, Uvest had taken over from MSP, and was starting the process to get permission from various authorities to rezone several properties within the 281 hectares. It was to submit two rezoning applications pertaining to 15 properties, of which it owned 14.9 The first was needed because Uvest wanted to develop two erven, 5.7-hectares of which would be a commercial zone and 4.25-hectares of which would be occupied by a school. Ideally, they wanted to build a shopping centre, a school, and 781 parking bays. And the school, according to blueprints, is no ordinary educational haunt: it’s a Meridian school, managed by Curro. The fee structure doesn’t come cheap. Second prize would be covering the entire area with a mall.
There’s no mention of housing for those on the housing list.
ou’ll recall that there was a second piece of red tape to get out of the way: the rezoning of the land. Enter
In response to queries regarding this, the city said it could not legally compel developers to include low-cost housing in their developments. However, the city said they “have been working tirelessly at exploring new methods of increasing and expediting the delivery of affordable and inclusionary housing opportunities”. To this end, the city was also consulting with private developers regarding their possible role in affordable housing.
As for the other application, for the rezoning of 13 erven? What was to be built there? Well, that was up to the city, because – according to a letter to the city from the DEADP, dated 25 July 2015 – they were planning to buy it from Uvest once the rezoning was done.
The city did not tell Daily Maverick Chronicle why it was buying the land. But it did say a condition of purchase was that the land be found fit for residential development and accordingly rezoned prior to purchase. Proposed purchase price: R52-million. The city says the purchase is funded by “a combination of internal and external funding (including concessionary funding instruments)”.
Daily Maverick Chronicle was unable to find anyone willing to state on record what the land might be worth if zoned agriculturally.
9 Link to p36 and p37 in pdf file Appendix G8 Social Impact Assessment map
it was not necessary for the city to do an environmental impact assessment before rezoning the land to allowurban development. The rationale? It had not yet been (finally) decided what to build on the land. Only once a concrete application for building was in place, would an environmental impact assessment be required. In the meantime, it could rezone.
That was just over two years ago. Since then, Heritage Western Cape has refused the rezone, which Uvest has appealed twice, with both appeals dismissed. HWC approved the smaller rezoning application – for the parking lot and the mall – but the community disagreed.
The PHA Food and Farming Campaign has been fighting the above developments in the PHA for years, endorsed by 33 civil society organisations including the Kaapse Vlakte Landbou Vereniging, the Philippi Developing Farmers Association and the Philippi Horticulture Housing Committee.10 Nazeer Sonday, who spearheads the PHA Food and Farming Campaign, has been fighting this battle for a decade.
he letter from DEADP to the city brought with it more news that disturbed activists: The department ruled
10 HWC Appeal PHA for food and farming response-E, page 2
pictured by the settlers, but quite the opposite: Oakland City, a settlement of 20,000 homes on 472 hectares of unfarmed sand dunes which at the time formed the south-eastern corner of the PHA.
The odds, it appeared, were initially stacked against Oaker too. The land, although it was not farmed at the time, was designated for horticultural use. That land was, and still remains, part of an important catchment area for the Cape Flats Aquifer. And water experts had been warning for years that it was time to start relying on groundwater.
Like MSP and Uvest, Oaker faced red tape. First, he had to get permission from the National Minister of Agriculture to have the land designated for urban use, which meant the urban edge had to be moved.
Second, he needed the green light from the city to rezone the land for mixed-use development. If approved, he’d be allowed to build retail outlets, offices, industrial complexes and residential areas.
Oaker wrote to then-Minister of Agriculture, Lulama Xingwana. For months, there was no response.
In the meantime, Oaker’s application put the PHA under the microscope. It was about time, since Cape Town’s new Spatial Development Framework – or SDF – was on the cards; a 20-year plan to manage growth and change in the city.
The early months of 2009 saw a review of the available information on the PHA by SPUD, the City’s Spatial Planning and Urban Design Department, who also consulted with other departments including Water Service, Transport, Environmental Resource Management and Housing.
As in Uvest’s case, housing was placed under the spotlight: the massive housing backlog was raised. The Department of Housing complained – as suggested above – that every other land use was “prioritised over housing” and that “bio-diversity (and) nature always trump the shelter needs of the poor”. The decision-makers at Pepco – the City’s Panning and Environment Portfolio Committee, consisting of councillors and aldermen elected to serve the people – weighed the evidence. In May 2009, SPUD recommended to PEPCO that the PHA be recognised as an agricultural resource asset and that Oaker’s land remain a part of it. They also identified another 365 hectares within the PHA that would be more suitable to develop, since it was already being used for non-horticultural purposes like panel-beating and horse-rearing. SPUD added that additional studies were needed to assess the aquifer as a future source of potable water, and to determine the loss of the PHA in terms of food security and water resources. In short: tread lightly.
hen speculator Wentzel Oaker arrived in Philippi, circa 2005, he did not envisage the food garden
"What will we eat, bricks?" Protestors gathered in Cape Town
to call for protection of the PHA in 2017. Photo by Sumeya Gasa.
Dated: April 2009
Item PHA PEPCO April 09
Title Submission by the Housing Department as Part of its Comment
Housing was not happy. They had wanted Oaker’s land and the adjacent land excised from the PHA immediately. At the same meeting, they stated their case. The 20,000 homes were sorely needed. They cited the same statistics argued in the Uvest case: a backlog of some 400,000 families needing homes.
A brief detour: it’s worth mentioning that in the lead-up to the recent local government elections in 2016, a key gripe by residents of Philippi’s Ward 80 was an ongoing housing challenge. Although most of the land is used for farming, there is a large proportion of informal settlements. According to the 2011 census, 66% of the ward’s nearly 16,000 households live in shacks. Early in 2016, GroundUp reported that then-Ward Councillor, the ANC’s Thembinkosi Pupa, was pushing for housing development in the area, noting that the 66% rate of shack-dwellers in the area was three times the province’s average of 18.2%.
According to Pupa’s Ward Report before the elections, there were several achievements in the previous five years: electricity to 5,741 households; 163 chemical toilets; 920 flush toilets, and three housing projects totalling 349 houses plus the Nompumelelo housing project of 315 units were underway. But residents disagreed, complaining of poor service delivery, particularly regarding housing. Housing projects started years previously had either been abandoned or were progressing so slowly they had all but ground to a halt, they said. Nompumelelo, for example, began in 2004 and stopped dead two years later when a contractor abandoned the project. It only moved ahead again in 2016, residents said. Many of the houses were completed at homeowners’ own expense.
Back at that 2009 meeting, PEPCO ruled that a special task team should produce another independent report.
At the August presentation of said report, Oaker’s representative, Paul Olden, also gave a presentation intended to convince officials that Philippi needed affordable social housing. At the time, the Cape Times reported that he argued “specialist studies revealed there were 1,000-hectares of land outside the PHA that could be farmed, and only 140-hectares of the PHA were actually farmed”. He also claimed the task team “fudged” their report. Asked by Daily Maverick Chronicle for said specialist studies, or evidence of said fudging, he did not respond.
.All this was moot, however: the national minister wrote back, and refused Oaker’s request.
This was an early example of what Capetonians will by now well recognise in the management of the water crisis: an ongoing disconnect between local, provincial and national government, and a persistent challenge in finding consistent
Oaker was disciplined by the Financial Services Board for inflating the value of the land by some 2000%, effectively cheating six pension funds.
answers at all three levels. Despite the national minister’s decision, on 27 May 2011, Anton Bredell, then minister of the Provincial Department of Environmental and Development
Planning (DEADP), ignored the city’s 2009 recommendation to him that the land remain as part of the PHA, and excised Oaker’s land from the area. He did so by amending the SDF.
This came as a surprise to activists, who argued that the move also ignored a Constitutional Court ruling that the National Minister of Agriculture had the final say. Daily Maverick Chronicle asked the city why they did not appeal Bredell’s decision. The city said they did consider such measures, but that the SPUD was advised by the city’s legal department that it could not appeal the matter on grounds that the National Department of Agriculture refused to shift the urban edge. This was because there was no legal provision for appealing a structure plan amendment application.
Asked why Bredell paid no heed to the city’s recommendation in light of the national minister’s refusal to shift the urban edge, his spokesperson James-Brent Styan said it was a city matter and that he could not comment on it.
The PHA supplies over 100,000 tonnes of food annually. Photo by Sumeya Gasa.
of the land by some 2000%, effectively cheating six pension funds (which were reportedly Cosatu-affiliated at the time) out of millions of rands. The FSB inspection report showed that the person behind the entire Rockland structure was Wentzel Oaker, who filled nearly every role, from compliance officer, chief executive, trustee to controlling director of numerous associated companies. What is not publicised is the legal wrangling that followed: a battle between Oaker and the appointed curator, Pierre du Plessis Kriel, who ended up in court themselves.
According to the most recent report filed to the FSB by Kriel prior to the the fall-out with Oaker, Oaker had, in fact, paid the majority of his debts. One of the debts that remained unpaid, however, was to the pension funds. Although it has been reported that for many of the funds, for example the Telkom Retirement Fund, the investment in Oaker’s land represents only a percentage of their overall investment, for Oaker the stakes may differ.
t has been well documented that Oaker was disciplined by the Financial Services Board for inflating the value
still enough land within the urban edge to accommodate the increasing need for housing until 2021.
And, adds Sonday, when the draft SDF was passed around for comment from civil society – standard practice – Oaker’s land was still demarcated as part of the PHA.
Bredell’s spokesperson Styan, however, said that a public participation process was followed.
Furthermore, council approval of the Oakland City Developmental Framework has since re-worded the approval to exclude subsidised housing, negating the claim that the development is socially justifiable. “It excludes the 1,200 families in the immediate vicinity of the PHA who live in informal settlements. These are the city’s citizens most in need, and are referred to extensively in both the SPLUMA requirements for development, and the PHA review document,” reads comment from approximately 20 civil society groups on the Environmental Impact Report for Oakland City. The same, they argue, goes for the private school.
In short, when farmers are battling a crippling drought, they argue, citizens’ food security is being placed in jeopardy through the excision of high-potential agricultural land from the PHA. This was justified to provide social housing that was needed urgently – except it may not provide social housing at all.
And then there’s another unintended consequence: in the long term, the property market also stands to lose if resources are unbearably strained. Cape Town has already begun to experience this, with water shortages affecting house prices.
Asked whether there will be low-cost housing for those on the housing list in Oaklands City, the city said that individual precinct plans for Oaklands City were still being prepared, and it therefore could not answer specific questions about the housing component of the development.
The city also stated that the provision of low-cost housing within the development could not be made into a legally binding requirement in the absence of any provisions for such conditions in the Municipal Planning By-law or in policy. However, although it was too late for the Oaklands City Development, the city said it was working on a proposed inclusionary housing policy and that it was “engaging with private developers about their role in affordable housing”.
And then there’s another unintended consequence: in the long term, the property market also stands to lose if resources are unbearably strained.
t the time Bredell amended the SDF, an October 2010 study by the city had just projected that there was
Pickets showing news headlines about the PHA are set up by activists protesting various aspects of the proposed development of the area. Photo by Sumeya Gasa.
by Consol, which activists from the campaign are also concerned about and plan to challenge legally. They say it would irreparably compromise the integrity of the aquifer, with mine water reaching the neighbouring Ramsar sites of Zeekoevlei and Rondevlei within 20 years. They are further concerned that the mine will have consequences for the largest wetland in the PHA, which is home to 98 migratory bird species in winter and lush farmland in summer.
The EIA has been passed, however, and the activists’ appeal denied, with 300-hectares of prospecting rights granted. Consol’s atmospheric impact report and water licence use application make several recommendations for mitigating damage to the environment, and for now, that matter rests.
The study investigating the feasibility of a future mixed-use development on the PHA has also gone ahead, despite activists’ protests. It was won by Indego, headed up by one Karen Harrison, who was grilled by activists, civil society and members of the Standing Committee, a multi-party body appointed to oversee the management of the PHA, on 2 August 2017. The outcome is pending.
For the moment, the activists are contesting only the Uvest and Oakland City developments in court, following a lengthy process to get there.
On Friday, 15 September 2017, the campaign filed a case with the Western Cape High Court, challenging several decisions in the PHA relating to the above-mentioned developments. These include the city’s decision to excise the 281-hectares from the PHA, and the HWC decision to approve the rezoning of the two erven destined to be occupied by a mall, parking lot, and/or high-cost school. Sonday is one of the applicants in the case, due to be heard in 2018.
If the PHA Campaign wins, the land will remain as is for now. If they lose, Sonday could be personally liable for legal costs, because the campaign is run by volunteers like himself, at their own expense. Sonday will have to sell his smallholding in Philippi, and, simply put, lose everything. DM
new development, in a northern corner of the PHA, is the application for a 55-hectare open sand mine
