GOOD Statement by Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General & City of Cape Town Mayoral Candidate:
Sixty years after District Six was declared a “whites only” area, followed by the catastrophic forced removal of 60,000 people, mostly to the Cape Flats, the process of restitution and redress is making painfully slow progress.
The barren area today stands as a grotesque monument to the evil of the apartheid government, and its policy of separate development. But it also stands as a monument to the post-apartheid State, at all levels, which has failed in its duty to unstitch the spatial injustice of the past.
Many land claimants have passed away without the justice of being able to return to the land from which they were removed. The slow pace of development and restitution is a travesty of justice.
The few families who have returned, and in particular those in the relatively new Phase 3, are now experiencing a new kind of oppression.
About 100 new homes that were handed over to land claimants were built on land registered in the name of the Cape Technikon (now Cape Peninsula University of Technology) – which is in arrears with the City of Cape Town.
This means that every time residents purchase pre-paid electricity funds are deducted to repay CPUT debt. It is a graphic example of why the City’s one-size-fits-all debt collection method of using prepaid electricity metres to deduct arrears is wrong.
The Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development Zwanele Nyhontso addressed District Six Claimants at the Cape Town Castle today.
He explained his department had allocated R684 million towards the R2.4 billion redevelopment project – but that no other government had contributed anything.
The Provincial Government and City of Cape Town have a concurrent duty to achieve land reform, restitution and spatial justice redress.
The Province and City are guilty of using and abusing District Six as a political football. They have a duty to step up and work with the National Government, contribute funding and services, to help fast track the opportunity for claimants to return home.
We trust the Province and City took note of Minister Nyhontso’s unequivocal commitment that the land belongs to the people who were dispossessed and that it would never be sold or gentrified.
GOOD Anti-Discrimination: GOOD stands against all forms of discrimination and promotes equality.
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