16 February 2024
Premiere Winde Whitewashes Tafelberg Site
The Western Cape Government is attempting to whitewash the years of struggle for the site known as Tafelberg by now referring to it as 353 on Main Road, Sea Point
On 8 February 2024, the Province posted notices on the site and on their website inviting any ‘Interested and Affected Party’ to register their interest in participating in a 2 year ‘exploration process’ on the development of the 353 on Main Road site in Sea Point by 11 March. The Province is deliberately attempting to erase the memory and presence of the current struggle by avoiding the use of the established name “Tafelberg”
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. 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:
We call on Premier Winde in his State of the Province Address on Monday (19 February) 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.
We hope this is not another delay tactic nor wasteful expenditure of resources- as the Province’s own feasibility study showed in 2016, amongst 8 other studies, that hundreds of units could be built on that site.
The Tafelberg site has been empty for 14 years. There have been at least 9 feasibility studies proving how social housing could be developed on the site, including 1 from the province itself and in 2013 even the Provincial Department of Human Settlements asked to use the site to build affordable housing (see from para 136 of 2020 High Court Judgement for more detail on the Province’s own development process).
Instead of using the site to tackle spatial apartheid, the Province tried to sell this prime public land off to the highest bidder and since then we have been in an ongoing court battle with the Province on this matter. Between 2016 and 2018 alone the Province wasted R5 431 341.25 million in public monies fighting the Tafelberg case in the courts, during which time the sale of the site to a private school was categorically reversed. Could it be that after this indefensible use of taxpayers monies the Province still hasn’t learnt its lesson?
Even though the Province is revisiting the site to investigate what could be developed there: Ndifuna Ukwazi has 4 main concerns.
- First, the Province uses the name ‘353 Main Road’ for the site, rather than the publicly recognisable name Tafelberg, as the site is widely known.
- Second, the Province includes the “Re-activation of school facility as an urban public school” in their Preliminary Key Development Elements identified alongside spatial transformation and the development of affordable housing which raises alarms about the possibility site being turned back into a school as a way to avoid building affordable housing in Sea Point.
- Third, the starting of a new 2-year process shows a severe lack of urgency in the context that there are 9 existing feasibility studies that could be revisited and updated.
- Lastly, the Province did notify nor engage Ndifuna Ukwazi nor Reclaim the City who after 8 years of public campaigning and court action, are clearly Interested and Affected parties on the site, in developing the scope of the current investigation, nor the initiation thereof.
We urge all public parties, civilians, and civic societies to call on the Western Cape Government to construct well-located affordable housing in Sea Point. Members of the public can register their voices by emailing your name, email address, physical address and your organisational affiliation (if any) to 353onMain@westerncape.gov.za to be a part of the affected parties database.
