The relocation scheme is terribly disorganised, and the land use is far from optimal. What's worse, it aims to eliminate invaluable urban agricultural land.
Far be it from me to agree with the socialists at GroundUp, but in this case I must make an exception.
In Eersterivier, on the outskirts of Cape Town, a cluster of informal farmers face eviction to make way for a housing project. But the proposed relocation site is already home to residents, and the land is too small to accommodate the farmers and their livestock, intensifying tensions in the community.
The land is public, and so the issues of private property are not a live issue. It is of course, my position that land invasions must be taken seriously, and I remain an advocate of stern (perhaps to some, callous) consequences for land invaders. But in this case, the interests of the whole community are much better served by preserving the urban enclave as an agricultural development zone.
The land in question is a 72-hectare plot owned by the Western Cape government which has been earmarked for the lucrative Ithemba housing development, a project stalled for years. The initiative plans to deliver 2,400 homes, including low-income and subsidised units, alongside public facilities.
Yet, progress has been slow, hampered by the presence of nearly 80 small-scale farmers who have operated on this land for years.
The government’s solution is to relocate the farmers to a smaller plot to the west. But they have chosen the most retarded possible way to do this.
The land they want to relocate them to is already occupied by informal housing, and City officials have allegedly resorted to bizarre coercive tactics, which if GroundUp’s witnesses are to be believed, seem rather desperate.
Residents like Salome Oliver, who already live on the west side, claim they were issued ultimatums by government officials. Oliver says she was warned her housing application could be jeopardized if she did not allow a farmer to occupy her current home.
The farmers, for their part, are not opposed to relocation in principle but demand clearer terms. They have asked whether they will receive leases, how large the new plots will be, and whether basic services like electricity and sanitation will be provided. Meetings with the Housing Development Agency (HDA) have left them with more questions than answers.
But from my perspective, urban farmland that has not been permanently rendered infertile from urban development needs to be preserved. Once paved over, it is often gone forever.
A more reasonable solution from my perspective would be to zone the plot exclusively for agricultural use, issue title deeds to the little guys grazing their cattle there (it’s not like the DA are opposed to issuing title deeds to land invaders anyhow, and this doesn’t hurt private property owners), and let them sell out to whatever commercial farming interest can best make use of the land, giving them enough capital to set up elsewhere without the need for an eviction.
Urban farming has long been a little fetish of left-wing activists, but it happens to be the case that they are right about it - the agricultural inclusions in Cape Town, particularly Philippi, have proven to be an important source of low-cost fresh produce in the city which helps alleviate the market pressures on basic food items.
Ten years ago, under Patricia de Lille’s mayoralty, the City attempted to get rid of the agricultural area and have it rezoned for commercial property development. This was a woefully misguided decision, fortunately fought against hard by activists and academics (sometimes their pain-in-the-arse attitude does serve decent ends).
Yet the City keeps trying, and attempted to rezone Philippi again in 2019.
While the academic literature tends to fetishise “traditional farming methods” and little hippie fresh produce gardens, this need not be the picture one projects onto such areas, and really isn’t ideal for the main economic purpose - Philippi is farmed by professionals who farm at significantly greater than subsistence scale.
While 72 hectares is not exactly a megafarm, according to our main national agricultural pundit Wandile Sihlobo, “one hectare of irrigated peri-urban land, suitable for vegetable farming or herb gardening, has a higher profit potential than 500 hectares of low-quality land in the Karoo”, meaning that this is more than enough to have a positive impact on local food prices.
My argument here is simple - there are many ways to skin a cat when seeking new housing, but the price of agricultural land (or for that matter, natural habitat) is inalculable. Therefore, agricultural use should always win out - it’s a matter of long-term thinking vs short-term target-chasing.
Uphill
So what do we do about the 2.4k housing units?
Well it strikes me that the land use plan may be somewhat inefficient. Much of the green inclusion in Eersterivier is not yet in use. Nor is much of the land to the east of it, or the south.
The triangle to the left on the map above is 2.34km2. The triangle below it is about a third of its land area, as is the unused strip to the east of the infantry base. This leaves roughly 3.5-4km2 to play with, private and national property rights allowing.
The top 100 European towns and cities in terms of population density are all above 2.4k people per km2, and the top ten have over 15 000/km2, which begs the question, why is Cape Town struggling with housing at a mere 1500 people per km2?
Part of the issue is shortage of land for public housing - it is well known that organisations, many of which are part of by foreign state-funded NGO networks, like the Open Society dependents at SERI, Ndifuna Ukwazi and Reclaim the City, will do whatever they can to prevent any reasonable engagement between the city, land invaders and the community, and some occasionally assist directly in land/property invasions themselves.
But as cases like this demonstrate, the City is fully capable of pulling strongarm tactics to move people when the need arises, and in other cases, fully capable of giving tacit approval (i.e., turning a blind eye) to construction companies when they violate due process (of course, nothing improper appears to be the case on the part of the contractor here, but generally speaking, red tape often appears to be less of a hindrance in some cases than others).
The key then, should not be to attempt a simple geometric suburban layout, but a European-style modern development, which would surpass all the City’s “densification” targets rather easily, without removing the 72ha farmland from use.
In fact, one could easily cram 20k people on the open land in the area and even allow the farming to continue, even let it expand a little, while having the same population density as Barcelona.
But the City has been committed to the Ithemba contract (the safety equipment manufacturers on the map above are an unrelated enterprise) instead.
However, considering the difficulties in removing the farmers, it may in the end be less costly to have the plan redesigned to work around them than bulldoze through them, especially if the plan risks getting scrapped if sufficient fuss is kicked up.
However, with four years having elapsed since the plans were drawn up and presented to the public, the City has had enough time to reconsider.
Perhaps it is time we reassess some of our usual town planning habits. After all, with property prices skyrocketing, and land becoming increasingly unavailable, the old white suburban sprawl design may be an increasingly outdated aspiration.
