The fight for social housing at the old Tafelberg school site continues.
The Western Cape Government has placed notifications on their website seeking any “Interested and Affected Party” to register their interest in participating in a two-year “exploration process” for the development of 353 Main Road in Sea Point by Monday March 11.
However, Ndifuni Ukwazi (NU), a social housing advocate, claims that the Western Cape government is seeking to whitewash the years of battle for the Tafelberg site by referring to it as 353 Main Road, Sea Point.
“This Tafelberg site is at the centre of the fight for well-located affordable housing for the poor and working class, by Reclaim the City against the Western Cape Government and City of Cape Town, which began in 2016,” says a statement from NU.
“While we, Ndifuna Ukwazi, the legal representatives of Reclaim the City are awaiting outcome of the legal challenge at the Supreme Court of Appeal, there is nothing in the court case that stops the Province from urgently building social housing on the land.”
According to NU, the Tafelberg site has been empty for 14 years and there have been at least nine feasibility studies proving how social housing could be developed on the site, including one from the province itself and in 2013 the Provincial Department of Human Settlements asked to use the site to build affordable housing.
In response to NU’s statement, the Western Cape Department of Infrastructure (DOI) said some of the studies, reports, and policy frameworks are outdated.
“It is the intention of this process to investigate and assess the potential development options for this property and advise the DOI on the way forward in order to ensure that the property reaches its highest and best potential in serving the wider communities of the Western Cape. This must be in line with applicable spatial policies and legislative frameworks.
“The call for registration as interested and affected parties was the first step and will enable engagement with the general public during the project lifecycle.
The department said because the property is now vacant, an address is the best naming standard for Interested and Affected Parties who are new to the area and may be unfamiliar with past names.
Reclaim the City (RTC), a housing activist group, expressed concern about Premier Alan Winde's State of the Province Address (SOPA) on February 19, which they said failed to address the important issue of spatial inequity in the Western Cape.
“It is alarming that, despite the Province facing a housing backlog of approximately 600 000 housing units, the Premier’s address was conspicuously silent on this crisis of human settlements. This oversight is particularly troubling given that the budget speech is imminent, and it would have been prudent for the Premier to advocate against cuts to the human settlements budget,” the RTC statement said.
The RTC said they have formally approached the Premier Winde, most recently on January 22 when they sent an open letter and have still not received a reply nor a date by which one can be expected regarding the Tafelberg site being used for social housing.
NU added that they hope it is not another delay tactic nor wasteful expenditure of resources as the Province’s own feasibility study showed in 2016, amongst eight other studies, that hundreds of units could be built on that site.
“We call on Premier Winde (regarding SOPA speech) to correct the course of the province from shying away from its constitutional responsibilities and from what the Tafelberg matter is at its core: a critical need for well-located affordable housing in Sea Point, and other areas that were demarcated for white people only, and to demonstrate a political will to end and reverse spatial apartheid and injustice,” NU said.