By Councillor Marga Haywood City of Cape Town Sub Council 16 Ward 74

The information in this article was obtained from correspondence between the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, the City of Cape Town and the organizations and individuals of the Greater Hout Bay, participating in the process.


Background
In February 2007, in the wake of the local government by-election that followed the passing away of DA ward councillor Pieter Venter, the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation was requested to facilitate a consensus seeking process in order to find a solution (with buy-in from all key role-players in Hout Bay) to deal with the immediate crisis of overcrowding, lack of facilities, and lack of service delivery pertaining to Imizamo Yethu and Hangberg, and impacting on the entire community throughout the area. Four fundamental issues needed to be addressed:

• The upgrading IY and Hangberg houses, ensuring that the necessary requirements and facilities for sustainable housing be made available.
• How to go about this? Realistically some residents will have to be moved out of IY to upgrade the area. This would need to be done on a negotiation basis, ensuring that there is no sense of this being a “forced removal”. (Some present argued that all removals had to be on a volunteer basis. Others asked what the situation would be if people simply refused to move?)
• Where residents who needed to vacate their present homes would be moved to?
• Which beneficiary / housing list would be used?

Overall Aim
To draft a COMPREHENSIVE, TRANSPARENT and FAIR plan that will ensure access to formal housing, properly serviced, for all people living in the Greater Hout Bay area.

Areas of discussion

• Living conditions in IY and Hangberg
  This plan must address overcrowded and unacceptable housing conditions in Hangberg as well as Imizamo Yethu. Present conditions militate against Constitutional values and undermine the human dignity of those who live there. Residents from across Hout Bay have a common mind on this.

• Type of development envisioned
  Integrated and sustainable communities with a balance between residential and recreational facilities need to be built. This will require cooperation from all levels of government, as well as the goodwill and skills of the wider Hout Bay community.

• The status and role of the 16 Hectares
  This land is perfectly suited as a flagship project. Given a commitment from governmental authorities to develop an integrated development plan, the interdict against development on this land should be lifted. Authorities will be urged to move as fast as possible to ensure tangible results whilst preventing new informal settlements on the land during the development phase.

• The list of beneficiaries
  The community looks to the City to provide the best available list. This should be based on a first-come-first-serve basis. The City should also enable public engagement with the list for a window period. Community leaders will be required to mediate grievances.

• The moving of residents
  Movement of some residents is inevitable. This will be done on a consultative basis and no person will be moved unless access to housing is provided for in another setting. This process needs to be conducted with due regard to individual circumstances.

• A Hout Bay wide development plan, including a possible moratorium on new developments.
  The City needs to provide clear infrastructural, social and environmental parameters to govern new developments in Hout Bay. All prospective development needs to conform to these parameters. No new development (excluding those already underway) should be allowed until such parameters are in place.

• Public or private land?
  A first step is for the City to provide a comprehensive land audit of the South Peninsula district. It is recognised that not all public land is suitable for housing. Private land may be too expensive. However, it appears that many opportunities exist within reasonable distance from Hout Bay if all three tiers of government avail unutilised land parcels for housing.

• Gaining community consensus, notably in communities most directly affected
  A representative panel from the working committee will present the compromise document to public meetings in the various communities and obtain feedback. Working committee members will also be expected to promote the plan once agreed to in their respective constituencies.

• Holding authorities accountable
  The committee deplores a history of governmental neglect in the area. The committee also notes the tensions between different tiers of government on how to address the crisis and appeals to all involved to speak with a more unified voice. To restore confidence, authorities working on the solution will be required to report back to the working committee on a regular basis. A team with capacity and skills should be appointed to execute prepared plans.

• Time Lines
  Time is running out. Solutions are needed speedily. The project will therefore run against a clearly defined time line. At the next meeting the City needs to report on available land and the beneficiaries list. The province should be represented at this meeting. (IJR Consensus seeking document dated 23 March 2007)
  

Response from the City
During May the City responded to the Institute by emphasizing that it had to deal equitably and sustainably with the crisis:

“The crisis has to be dealt with City-wide, as a result of some 249 informal settlements, many of them on invaded land without services. After extensive investigation, we have concluded that we can only upgrade about 89 of these settlements “in situ”. The rest will require resettlement which necessitates about 450 hectares of land. This extent of land is not available or immediately affordable to the City within the Metro. We are urgently trying to find solutions to the critical issue of land affordability and availability. The continued collapse of infrastructure in the Eastern Cape looks set to give additional momentum to the net in-migration to Cape Town, and our approach to dealing with this must be consistent -- not ad-hoc, random or reactive to variable pressures.

We are also finalising, on the basis of equitable criteria, a priority list for installing or upgrading basic services in all of these communities and we are going to have to stick with this process. We will create an unsustainable and chaotic situation throughout the City if we enable communities to use land invasions as a tool to jump the queue and get access to land or houses over the heads of others who have been waiting much longer (in some cases for decades).

Other Cities have taken a very firm line on this matter -- notably the City of Johannesburg which adopts a “zero tolerance” approach to land invasions. The City of Cape Town has been much more accommodating, in the process creating as many problems as we have tried to solve. We are studying the outcome of recent court cases on related matters to assist us in finding a way forward.”

Subsequently, at a feedback meeting in Hangberg on the 31st of October 2007, the City informed that there is no land immediately available to house 2 300 families from Imizamo Yethu. The city reported that “there is very little vacant or under-developed land in public ownership in the Llandudno, Hout Bay and Constantia area and in fact in the broader south peninsula area which is an older and more developed part of the city. There are a number of vacant sites in this area however which are subject to land claims. The only significant housing project in this part of the city is the Pelican Park project, which is currently over-subscribed. The bulk of vacant/ under-developed land of significant size is further to the east and north of the city, similarly the City’s housing projects.

There are two city-owned sites in Constantia, one of which is currently a waste fill site and this facility continues to be required. This site is also the subject of a land claim. There is also a depot site which is too small for the purposes of a housing development. There is land owned by other spheres of government/ government institutions but further investigation would be required to understand these organ’s intentions with respect to this land. A key site in this regard which offers significant development potential is the Youngsfield site which is currently owned by National Government and is occupied by the Military, which the city has to date failed to unlock.”

Currently land available for immediate occupation is committed as part of the role out of new projects across the City. Until recently, Bardale and Happy Valley were used for “crisis” relocations, but now they are full. New land entering into the acquisition process will require EIAs and rezoning before it can be occupied i.e. about 18 months. Currently two large areas of land were identified by Planning for investigation for acquisition in Blaauberg East (400ha) and North of Kraaifontein (280ha). The Blaauberg East land valuations indicate that it will cost an estimated R1, 5m per Ha (R600m) and the Kraaifontein North land R1, 0m per Ha (R280m). These amounts are beyond the City’s allocation for land and other sources of funding are being investigated as well other options. The only other land that could be rapidly prepared for possible occupation is in Atlantis which has not been considered appropriate for Imizamo Yethu.

Response from the Broader Hout Bay Community

No formal response has been forthcoming from the community organisations who participated in the process. However, individual responses ranged from anger to despair:

“My immediate response is that there is one word to describe the feedback and support from the government to the IJR process and that word is "Pathetic"; “The IJR "land Audit" identified a substantial number of pieces of land out side Hout Bay, all of which Basil Davidson dismissively wrote off as unavailable. I believe that at least a few of these pieces of land (mostly in Provincial and National ownership) should be used for housing and, if enough noise is made by those with influence, perhaps could be.” ; “…we will have to deal with Province & Central Government to unlock available land.”; “Hi, after the awfully depressing meeting last week in Hangberg, I’d like to know how we can proceed apropos the court action against government?”

The various responses emphasized the glaring fact that government is not complying with its constitutional obligations towards its citizens. In terms of schedules 4 and 5 of the Constitution, the provision of access to housing is a national and provincial competency. These two levels of government will have to come to the party and deliver land and housing subsidies to the thousands of homeless citizens. Only then can local government (the City) be expected to provide the infrastructure it is obliged to in terms of its Constitutional mandate.

16 Hectares
The planning work for the forestry and buffer sites has subsequently been completed and public participation will commence in February 2008. The plans include community amenities such as an AIDS Hospice, primary and high school, as well as two storey walk up flats. Provision has also been made for commercial development on the site. An informal discussion of the plans will take place at the next Ward 74 Forum meeting. It is expected that the formal public participation will commence in February 2008.